GIJoe: Sacrifice
by Jaenelle Angelline
Summary: Kennedy is prosecuted for trafficking Shana and Cam, Cam's trafficker is prosecuted for trafficking her as a child, and Shana and Snake Eyes get married. Book 4 in the 'Special Missions' Series.
1. Chapter 1: Brave

**Chapter 1: Brave**

"General Hawk, Sir!"

Hawk looked up at the sound of the voice. And blinked. The owner of that voice wasn't habitually an early riser, and was usually not even coherent until he'd had his first cup of coffee. "Aren't you up early, Conrad?"

Duke didn't smile. "General Hawk. Sir. Permission to take a day off base. Sir."

Hawk sat back. Here it came. He'd been seeing many of the soldiers whispering around the halls, discussions that abruptly stopped whenever he was around, but he wasn't called 'Hawk' for nothing, nor had he gotten to the rank of General without learning ways of finding out what his soldiers were saying and thinking when he wasn't around. He'd already decided his course of action over this particular request—he'd asked Liv the other night if she minded if he went to the courthouse the next morning, and she had said of course not.

But he still wanted to hear it from his soldiers. "You have duties, First Sergeant."

Duke stiffened. "Sir. I traded off with Recoil, Sir. A lot of us, me included, decided we'd like to be at the courthouse, at least for this first day, to support our girls, Sir."

Hawk almost smiled. Almost. He'd been pretty sure this was what the whispering had been about even before he'd made sure that was the reason (thanks to Mainframe, whose role as one of Hawk's 'little birds' would forever remain secret) and Duke's words confirmed it. And although he would be the last person to ever tell his people that he was proud of them, he was proud of their closeness, their camaraderie, their support and loyalty to and for each other. "Did you ask the girls, Duke?"

"Sir. We all know how stubborn Scarlett is. Sir."

Hawk did smile that that. Yes, he could imagine what Shana would have said when Conrad said he wanted to be there the first day. "I take I she said no?"

Duke rubbed his chin. It didn't quite hide the smile. "She…was rather forceful about it."

"Think she's going to get forceful with me?"

Duke looked blank. "Sir?"

Clayton smiled. "I'm going to clear my schedule for today and go with you. I knew you were planning this, you know."

"Stalker figured. He said you were going to know. Allie said you might even go along."

Hawk grinned. His soldiers knew him too well. "What are you planning?"

"We get to the courthouse early, Sir. Dressed in our Class B's. Alex already said that and Shana can't be in the courtroom, they can't hear the details, just give testimony. Since the prosecutor also filed one of those for Charlie and snake Eyes and myself, we can't be in the courtroom either; neither can Allie and Lifeline and Stretcher. They subpoenaed Snake Eyes too but he submitted his testimony in written form and Abbie says she'll probably just call him for a quick cross-exam and there will be an AMESLAN interpreter in the courtroom for him as well. Cover Girl, Stalker, Recondo, Wild Bill, Jammer, Ace, Airborne, BeachHead, Tunnel Rat, Ambush, Hard Drive, Gung Ho, Dusty, Hacker and Flint also want to go."

Hawk mentally counted off the number of soldiers that would leave his base with…and then stumbled over three of the names Duke had rattled off. "Wait. Did you say Hard Drive, Hacker, and Jammer? They're communications and monitoring/surveillance specialists. Why are they going?"

"They're friends with Charlie."

"Not that close." There was something more to this than Hawk was seeing, but he had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't going to get an answer out of Duke. "Just tell me one thing; is it going to get us in trouble?"

"Not if we don't get caught."

Hawk raised an eyebrow. "Is what we're doing against the law and are our personnel going to be put in jail if someone finds out?"

Duke scratched his head. "Um, it's against courthouse rules but it's not against the law, per se. At least according to Alex."

"You all are starting to sound like her."

Duke shrugged. "Bad influence."

Hawk rolled his eyes. "So Alex knows about…whatever it is you're planning on doing."

"Yes."

"And she okayed it?"

Slight hesitation. "She doesn't really like it but she says she honestly can't see anything wrong with what we're planning, legally or ethically, as long as no one but us gets hold of the results. That's why Jammer's going, to make sure no one accidentally hijacks the frequency and finds it."

"Are you going to tell me eventually?"

Duke gave up. "Hard Drive has been playing around with the tracer chip that Alex brought from the ICC. He's figured out a way to connect it to a pinhole camera mounted to the side of a pair of glasses, with an audio/visual high capacity storage chip hidden behind the earpiece of the glasses. The camera and microphone is supposed to record the trial proceedings while Courtney's in the courtroom and we all can watch it when the day's over, even those of us who haven't been there or who couldn't be present in the courtroom."

Hawk heaved a gusty sigh. As he'd been wiggling the details out of Duke, he'd been wondering what it was they were doing, and now that he knew, he honestly couldn't see a reason to shut it down either. However, he was their superior and they had come up with this without him knowing… "I'm going to pretend this conversation never happened. Officially I know absolutely nothing. However, if Alex tells you to turn it off or shut it down, or if you can foresee if this is in any way going to put her career or Prosecutor Carmichael's career and Shana and Cam's case on the line, you will shut it down. That's an order."

"Sir. Yes, sir." Duke snapped a salute.

"That being said, I will approve the day off for the soldiers you mentioned. Only for the day. Alex said the trial would likely go on for about a week, so at the end of today you'll submit to me the names of those who will be…sitting in the courtroom… for the week. If any of those people have duties, Duke, or can't trade assignments to have someone else cover for them, they aren't going. When you submit that list you'll also show me an amended duty roster so I know who will be covering for whom where and when. Is that clear?"

"Yes Sir. Thank you, Sir."

"Good. Now get along to breakfast, I'll be saying a few words before you all leave for the first day of the trial." Duke saluted and disappeared.

He finished the last of the administrative paperwork sitting on his desk and headed for his quarters to change into his Class B's. He took the time to take out his decorations, stars, and other insignia, arranging them ostentatiously on his jacket—while he normally didn't make a show of his rank and commendations, he wanted to make it very clear to everyone watching the trial that the American military was behind their two soldiers and supported them. Over the last two weeks he'd become increasingly upset at the way media had been alternately trying to portray Damien Kennedy as innocent and a victim of his underlings' machinations—which Clayton couldn't understand at all because Damien had been arrested at the scene in the act of torturing one of the women, how anyone could think he was innocent when they knew that fact was beyond him.

And on the other end of the spectrum, there were people calling for a bullet in Kennedy's head before the trial even started. Siobhan's comments to the press hadn't helped at all; since she'd spoken to the press the morning before the news had been full of stories of the two women. They'd spoken to Shana's law professor at Harvard, some friends of the family in Atlanta, even tried to ask a few questions of her former posting at Fort Benning and called the commander at Fort Hamilton on the assumption that she was posted there.

And even more troubling, they'd managed to find people who knew Cam. They'd apparently sent a few news reporters to the reservation and had quite firmly been denied entrance; Cam had called Jennifer and asked her not to say anything, and so the tribe had refused to even allow reporters on reservation land. However, they'd gotten plenty from Adam Barefoot, who had called Cam quiet and a loner, had revealed to them that Cam had been disfigured in a childhood accident and had said, on national TV, that Cam had issues.

Clayton had the channels in the mess changed from news to something innocuous so Cam wouldn't be aware of the controversy, but he could see the whole trial was going to be a nightmare. Shana's suggestion the other day hadn't been anything he hadn't already planned on, so he and Liv (Auggie was asleep) made the trek from his quarters to the mess hall.

Half the people in the mess were either in their usual Joe uniforms, or regular fatigues, but those individuals who Duke had said wanted a day pass were there in their Class B's. And as he looked at the number of them sitting there proudly in their blue dress uniforms, firmly behind their own even if most of them only knew Cam in passing since she hadn't been there long. Their solidarity, their firmness of purpose was going to help immensely over the next week as the trial unfolded. Hawk had no doubt that they would find Damien Kennedy guilty. There was too much evidence; testimony from the dealer busted at the slave market who said that Kennedy had bought the two women, voice analysis of the audio from Cam's tracer chip that matched voice analysis of Kennedy's words, from various TV interviews and other sound bites from the years he'd been in business.

Unfortunately for Shana, the African slave traders who had shipped her from Africa to Amsterdam had been 'eliminated' in the Amsterdam slave market's attempt to keep the military from ever finding out where she was; there had been a story, barely even a blip on the news, of a cargo vessel called the _Mokata_ that accidentally collided with another ocean-going ship and had sunk with six people on board. Salvage operations were still being conducted, but the people who were on that ship were presumed dead. Hawk couldn't help wondering if they had been dead before the ship sank, and he'd also wondered of one of the recovered shipping containers was going to be found to have human bodies, corpses of those destined for the slave markets who had drowned chained to the floor in a stinking, filthy shipping container, having never seen the light of day again and having never been given the opportunity to try and save themselves. Thinking about it made his stomach clench—it was a horrible way to die. One of the Amsterdam port officials had been at the market the day it was raided by police (a huge embarrassment and a scandal for the government, that one of their appointed officials had been doing this for years, covering his tracks and making huge sums of money off the buying and selling of human beings) and had admitted that he'd ordered the African vessel eliminated because they knew about the red-haired female American soldier.

He stepped up to the front of the mess hall, cleared his throat ostentatiously in a request for silence. Every eye in the mess turned to him; he looked them all over quickly, then let his gaze linger on the table at which Alex, Liv, Shana, Cam, Charlie and Snake Eyes was sitting. All of the soldiers were in Class B's. Alex, although she technically was a soldier and was entitled to wear a dress uniform, had apparently opted for a navy civilian skirt suit that very closely mimicked the cut and fit of the Class B's that everyone else wore. It was a clever move, subtly pointing out that she was a member of the military but was serving now in a quasi-civilian capacity as Federal Prosecutor Carmichael's second chair. Cam, he noted, had managed to find a set of class B's that sort of fit—the skirt was actually a few inches longer than regulation length on her, but he assumed that whoever she had borrowed them from was slightly taller than she was and there hadn't been time to hem or alter the clothing for a proper fit.

"These last few months have been a roller coaster," he started now. "Between Columbia and the Congo, California and New Mexico and New York, Amsterdam and Fiji, we've been through more in the last nine months than we do in a normal year. At least, what passes for normal for us." A ripple of amusement passed through the mess hall. "We've lost commanders," He didn't have to mention Clancy's name, everyone knew who he was talking about, "Lost friends, lost soldiers," a nod here to Alex, who had had her entire escort troop of young soldiers massacred before her eyes trying to protect her from a jungle ambush indirectly orchestrated by Cesar Velez, "And found new friends in the process." A nod to Liv, to Alex, to Cam. "But irregardless of what we've lost, the one thing we haven't lost, I'm proud to say, has been our cohesiveness as a unit. We've been through some rough times before, been in situations where we weren't sure who our friends were and who our enemies were, but the one thing we have always been sure of was that we could count on each other to treat us with honor, to do the right thing and stand by us even when everything seemed lost and hopeless. From those who have been with us for a long time," his gaze rested on Shana, "to those who may not have been with us for long but still exhibit the traits of loyalty, honor, justice and faith in each other, you have proven to me that my choice of each and every one of you for this posting, this unit, this project, has been well-deserved and richly rewarded." A sense of pride in every person there.

"But I wanted to bring special attention today to someone who is relatively new to us and yet has sacrificed everything for people in this unit she barely even knows. Corporal Cameron Arlington has been with us for less than six months, yet her commitment to her unit, her fellow soldiers, her friends and the people she loves and cares about has been sorely tested, in ways that few people should be tested. I need to take some responsibility for that; I gave her no choice in coming here, gave her no choice in staying, and then I trusted someone I shouldn't have, tried to give someone a chance who had already proven himself to be unworthy of trust, chances, or respect, and she paid that price in the dearest coin possible. And yet, despite all that, she managed to find it in herself to give us a chance instead of blaming us, and me, rightly, for her experiences. She opened her heart and her mind, gave us a chance. And when one of our own went missing under the worst circumstances and in the worst way possible, she took a gamble and risked everything—her freedom, her health, her sanity, and her life, to bring back an irreplaceable member of our unit. She volunteered for an unimaginable assignment under unimaginable conditions, knowing that failure would mean that she too, would be lost forever…and yet, knowing this, she still volunteered, and it was only through sheer luck that we recovered both of them.

"The road to recovery will be long, has involved much pain till now and will require more in the future. We will stand by her, as we stand by all of our soldiers, knowing that friendship and loyalty is the most precious currency in this world we live in, and we treasure it wherever we find it. She has a place with us for as long as she wants it, and we are in her debt. In acknowledgement of that I award her this Soldier's Medal, for conspicuous bravery in a situation that didn't involve enemy combat. It took determination and dedication to come up with the idea to bring Shana back; it took an extraordinary amount of courage and personal strength to suffer what she has and do what she did, to carry through with the idea and rescue a fellow soldier she has barely known half a year." He took the medal out of the box, crossed the mess hall, and before Cam could rise, looking stunned, he draped the ribbon with the medal around her neck and handed her the box that held the pin to which she would later affix the medal.

Cam's hands were shaking so hard she almost dropped the box…and then she rose from her wheelchair and gave him a crisp, snappy salute, which he returned.

Cheers erupted in the mess hall.


	2. Chapter 2: Opening Arguments

**Chapter 2 : Opening Arguments**

It was a strange motorcade that made its way to the courthouse that morning.

Mindful of their cover story, they'd taken Joe vehicles from Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, to Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, then requested use of Hamilton's military vehicles to take them the rest of the way to the Federal Courthouse in downtown Manhattan. Those who were to testify; Cam, Shana, Alex, Lady Jaye, Duke, Spirit , Snake Eyes, as well as Lifeline and Stretcher, were packed into the armored Hummer at the end of the motorcade—for that was what it looked like, a line of military vehicles each packed with soldiers being followed by the Hummer.

Flint rode in the lead vehicle with Hawk, contrary to his common custom of riding with Allie wherever they went. As the line of transports pulled up in front of the courthouse, Flint grinned at Hawk and got out first. As the reporters milling around the courthouse steps drew back in confusion, the rest of the vehicles pulled up one by one, disgorging a total of sixteen Joes.

"Atten-HUT!" Flint called in his best drill-sergeant voice, and as smoothly as if these sixteen had practiced it, they drew into four rows of four officers each, each one wearing their dress blues and sporting rank, insignia, decorations and medals. The first row, the front, held Beach Head and Wild Bill; Hawk stepped into the front right corner of the phalanx of officers, Flint stepped into the front left corner, and then he and Flint both called at the same time, "Form ranks!" The four rows of soldiers peeled smoothly apart into two rows of eight, one column headed by Hawk, the other line headed by Flint, Hawk's second in command.

The last vehicle pulled up and disgorged Shana and the rest of the Joes who would be testifying. Although Duke could have been the one to take charge of this group, it had been decided to really impress everyone with Shana's ability and rank, and so she'd been elected, on the way there, to call them into formation. As soon as the Hummer stopped, she got out, and Charlie and Snake Eyes followed next, going to the rear of the vehicle to get Cam's wheelchair out. As they were unfolding it the rest of the testifying team climbed out of the vehicle, Charlie got Cam settled in the wheelchair, and Shana led the march up the sidewalk, followed by Snake Eyes, Allie, Cam in her wheelchair, pushed along by Charlie, Stretcher and Lifeline, with Duke and Alex bringing up the rear. Shana brought her line to a stop, saluted Hawk crisply. He saluted back, and then in perfect unison he and Flint both started their lines for the courthouse, flanking Shana's group as flashbulbs popped and reporters babbled into their microphones.

Hawk stepped into the courthouse first, took his line of eight through the security sensors. Although the amount of metal on his jacket set off the sensors, after a quick wave of the wand he was allowed to pass, courthouse security plainly unsure what to do with the mass number of soldiers descending on them. After Hawk's line went through, Flint took his line as well, and apparently Alex had taken the trouble to find out which courtroom was going to house their trial because Flint made a beeline for the first door on the left. Hawk arranged his line to the right of the hallway, Flint on the left, and then as Shana's group passed through the security sensors everyone snapped to attention. She saluted Hawk again, one more time, before vanishing into the room reserved for witnesses on the far side of the courtroom door, and then Hawk brought his line into the courtroom and got them seated behind the prosecution's table. Moments later, having apparently gotten Shana's group settled, Alex and Federal Prosecutor Abbie Carmichael entered the courtroom and seated themselves at the prosecution's table.

Courtney and Hacker and the rest of the tech team had been in Flint's line, so it wasn't until they were all seated and waiting when he noticed that Courtney was wearing glasses. Since she'd never needed corrective lenses before, it stood out, but apparently, since all of them had been wearing stars and bars and their decorations, and those had caused the courthouse security sensors to go off, apparently courthouse security hadn't even looked twice.

He wasn't sure if it was a good thing (they hadn't been caught sneaking recording devices into the courthouse) or a bad thing (should it really have been that easy to get something into a Federal courthouse?) Granted, they were military, and he had quite a lot of gold braid all over him signifying that he was very high ranked, although he was fairly sure few people in the courthouse (besides his own people) knew just how high.

The prosecution followed moments later, and here came Damien Kennedy seated in a motorized wheelchair accompanied by his team of lawyers. Clayton had heard that he'd hired the best legal team out there, and he knew the truth of that now as he saw the lawyer that had defended a very well known, famous sports star from a DUI charge. However, if that lawyer was able to get Kennedy off on this charge Hawk would eat his cover. Arrested at the scene, with victims being members of the American military…

Kennedy, however, didn't look fazed at all. And while the Joes had taken over the first three rows of courthouse benches behind the prosecution, quite a lot of spectators were filtering in as well. What Hawk couldn't get his head around was the number of people filling in the seats behind the defendants' table—people who were quite plainly supporters of Damien Kennedy.

But what he did notice was that a lot of them were unmistakably uneasy at the number of Joes in the courtroom. _Not so sure your boy's innocent now, are you?_ He thought, noticing how one person who made eye contact hastily looked away. _It was easy to say you thought he was innocent and being railroaded but it's different now that you see how all of us are firmly convinced our girls—my girls—are telling the truth?_

The judge walked n, and the entire courtroom rose. The judge started to seat himself, then looked taken aback at the sea of navy blue military dress uniforms filling the first three rows of seats behind the prosecution's table. However, he refrained from saying anything as he seated himself. "Please be seated. Court is now in session."

Abbie Carmichael rose from her seat. Whether by coincidence or design, she too had worn a navy blue suit that looked a lot like Alex's, though tailored to fit her taller, leggier frame. "Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the matter before the court today is a very serious one. Two active, serving members of the US Army were sold as human slaves and held against their will by the defendant, Mr. Damien Kennedy. Mr. Kennedy has created quite a name and fortune for himself as a financial mogul, running one of the largest international brokerage firms in the world, with an income that spans nearly ten million a year. It is the prosecution's intention to prove that all of this was not enough, that Mr. Kennedy was so warped and morally deficient in his thinking that he believed he was entitled, by virtue of all that money, to own another human being. Although he could have had any woman out there, that there are any number of women willing to throw themselves at his feet the moment he snapped his fingers, he disregarded the debutantes, the eligible young ladies, the movie star he broke up with two months ago that made headlines, it was so sensational…he wanted, instead, a woman whom he had total and complete power over, a woman who he could force to sleep with him when women all over the world would have done it willingly.

"The woman he chose was US Army Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara. Sergeant O'Hara was on a humanitarian mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of a contingent of soldiers dispatched by the US at the request of the United Nations to rescue a group of children who were material witnesses for current ongoing war crimes trials levied by the International Criminal Court, of whom my second chair, Alexandra Cabot, was a volunteer member. Master Sergeant O'Hara and her team located the children, liberated them from the rogue militia factions who had captured them, and was facilitating their escape. In the process of ensuring the children were safe, Master Sergeant O'Hara was separated from the group when a bridge gave way and she was swept away from her team in a white-water rapid river. When she finally washed up some distance downstream, the rogue factions who use their aggression to mask their true intentions—raiding and burning villages, capturing the children and selling them on the international slave market—captured her. To them, Master Sergeant O'Hara was a dangerous but priceless commodity; white, adult female, fit, no diseases, in the best of health—but they couldn't sell her in Africa. So they sent her on a long, unimaginable trip by sea, chained to the floor of a cargo container ship, bound for Amsterdam. To keep her compliant she was subjected to forcible drugging.

"Incredibly, Master Sergeant O'Hara came out of that cargo container alive, and a special auction was declared by the slave market officials in Amsterdam, who invited a number of their wealthiest clients to attend an exclusive auction put together specifically to introduce Master Sergeant O'Hara to the wealthiest human traffickers in the world.

"Now one member of the team that escorted Master Sergeant O'Hara in the Congolese jungle refused to accept that her friend and commanding officer would most likely never come home. Although we hear, in the military, the old adage 'we never leave anyone behind', for this unit, this team, those words are written in stone and this member, Corporal Cameron Arlington, came up with a plan to go undercover as a human slave to find her commanding officer and friend and bring her back.

"Corporal Arlington, out of everyone in the unit, was herself uniquely suited to undertake this unimaginable mission. As a child, the death of her father remanded her guardianship to two people who claimed to be her Aunt and Uncle but who, in fact, were just looking for a uniquely vulnerable child around whom they could hatch their plans. At the age of fifteen Corporal Arlington was locked in a basement of an exclusive vacation home in western New York, where that Aunt and Uncle accepted money from a number of unscrupulous, increasingly violent pedophiles who subjected her to unimaginable abuse. It didn't end until the cabin caught fire three years later and she escaped, wandered lost in the New York wilderness until she crossed into the Iroquois reservation. As luck would have it, they recognized her as one of their own—her father was Iroquois—and adopted her into their tribe gave her a home. She, deciding to follow in the footsteps of her beloved father, enlisted in the Army five years later. Last fall she came to the attention of the commander of her unit when they were in a training class together and her superb skills earned her a place with the unit.

"However, she never once forgot where she had been and where she came from, and when a cruel stroke of fate placed a very close friend into the same situation from which she herself had escaped, Cameron Arlington devised a desperate but simple plan; she would go undercover as a slave, scour the markets for her friend and eventually bring her home with the assistance of an implanted tracer chip. And the plan worked—barely. She found Master Sergeant O'Hara, and the dedicated members of their unit found them, just in time to keep them both from death; at the time they were found Master Sergeant O'Hara had been crucified with nails through her wrists for three days and Corporal Arlington had been hung by her wrists with weights on her ankles until she was nearly dead of shock, blood loss, hunger and dehydration. Testimony from the medical professionals who were part of the rescue operation will show that they were both close to death and lucky to escape.

"That man, the defendant, Damien Kennedy, owned the island on which the two soldiers were found, was in fact taken into custody at the same moment he was preparing to again torture Corporal Arlington. The prosecution will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Damien Kennedy bought both women, was instrumental in their captivity, torture and attempted murder; will prove that he was behind the selling and trafficking of a large number of human beings through both direct funding of the slave market at which the two soldiers were purchased but also by keeping sex slaves of his own on a luxury island he purchased and outfitted specifically for this purpose. We will prove beyond a doubt that he was indeed responsible and should be punished to the fullest extent the law allows." She stopped speaking and sat down.

While it was a simplification of what had been an extremely complex operation, Hawk had to admire her way with words and the simple statement of fact that subtly played on jurors sympathies for Shana and Cam. Nevertheless, he braced himself as the defense lawyer got up to make his opening remarks. "Good morning, Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I stand before you today retained by my client to defend him from some heinous charges. Human trafficking? Sexual slavery? Physical abuse? All you need to do is look at him to know that those words are false. My client Damien Kennedy is a wealthy man; wealthy beyond, I'll admit, even my wildest dreams. He holds citizenship in three countries. He owns property in five. He has never been married and even in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, he is considered a very eligible bachelor. He is a businessman who handles multi-million dollar investments for wealthy clients worldwide; he is a philanthropist, investing heavily in charitable organizations all over the world; a pillar of the community he is from, admired and respected in Atlanta for generous donations to hospitals, schools, churches, and eldercare facilities. He is an upstanding American citizen who has never been in trouble with the law, unlike one of his alleged 'victims', Corporal Arlington. The defense will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara, despite her admirable dedication to her career with the US Army, was tired of playing soldier and was looking to settle down, to marry someone rich and live the rest of her life in such luxury that she would never again have to work if she didn't want to. Not that I blame her, of course; the life of a soldier is hard and dangerous and Master Sergeant O'Hara is young, vibrant and still has a lot of life ahead of her.

"My client's other accuser, Corporal Arlington, is a different matter. An orphan, abandoned by her mother with a father at an overseas Air Force Base who was never officially proven to be her biological father, she was a loner on base, never formed friendships with other children her age, and was subject to her father's somewhat unusual ideas about raising children. As a child, at the tender age of five Cam Arlington's father would take her out into the woods for days at a stretch carrying only what would fit in a child's backpack, and force her to learn how to kill and cook her own food, how to find and create shelters and weapons. He even reportedly 'lost' her in the woods one weekend to test what she had learned. So at an early age, when other children her age had the luxury of being children, Cam Arlington was having her childhood taken from her. She quickly learned how to manipulate the others around her, how to attract attention, and that need for attention, for love and affection in any form, became the driving force behind her life. She became a follower, someone who took orders and followed commands blindly because she had spent so much of her childhood taking orders from her father that she didn't know what else to do. With her Aunt and Uncle keeping her captive, as much as she may have hated it, the simple fact that here all she had to do was follow orders must have been a relief for young Cam Arlington.

"After the cabin burned down she was again at odds, with no one to tell her what to do. Living with the Iroquois tribe on the reservation gave her a chance to try living alone, and after five years she decided this wasn't for her. She enlisted in the Army, an easy decision for her since it now meant that her entire life would be regimented for her. She would be told when to get up, what to do with every waking minute, when to eat, when to sleep.

"But even here she had problems. Due to her previous experiences as a victim of her Aunt and Uncle's machinations, she could send confusing body signals to those around her, and it was no doubt this that led to a court-martial last summer of two of her commanding officers and one of her fellow cadets. Colonels Hilton and Broadview were both accused of maltreatment, of assault and battery, and a fellow Corporal, Walker, of rape and assault and abuse. Those allegations ended all those soldiers' careers.

"When her fellow soldier, Master Sergeant O'Hara, was captured on a mission she saw it as her chance to escape back into the world she knew, the world she was familiar with, the world she was used to. The world of human trafficking. Except this time she had an excuse, she said she was planning to find her friend. But according to my client's tenants, the individuals Rosa Capelletti and Hans Keil who rented the island, who lived on it and who were the ones responsible for bringing slaves to the island…according to them, the woman we know as Cam Arlington was a nameless faceless slave to them, a slave who never complained even when they hurt her deliberately to see if she was indeed willing. She never told them she was there against her will.

"We will submit evidence that while Master Sergeant O'Hara was indeed there against her will, my client Damien Kennedy was unaware of it. And he had no reason to believe that Cam Arlington was there unwillingly either. My client has been railroaded and manipulated by the people he trusted to care for his island in his absence and by the women he thought were willing, and deserves nothing but pity for the way he has been treated by those he most trusted."


	3. Chapter 3: Prosecution Statement

**Chapter 3: Prosecution Statement**

Clayton couldn't see Alex's face, but he could read the tension in her shoulders, in the rigid line of her back, as the defense stopped talking. According to his understanding of civilian law, the prosecution would now present its side of the story; would introduce all the evidence and testimony that proved that Kennedy knew what he had done, that Cam and Shana had truly suffered under his hands, and then once they were done the defense would cross-examine the prosecution's evidence and witness testimony, then would present everything they had that would counter whatever points the prosecution would present. The case would go to the jury and the jury would return a verdict.

It didn't keep him from being furious. That the defense would paint Shana as a scheming, money-hungry individual looking for a husband was so far from the truth—especially not Damien! And she had a gold band around her finger, Snake Eyes' engagement ring—that would be interesting when Shana brought it up, how was the defense going to refute that?

But what really made him angry was the way they had portrayed Cam. To be completely fair, yes, he could see how someone who didn't know her could get that impression, but the assertion that she manipulated people around her, attracted attention, that she was a blind follower who didn't know how to think on her own, that she would have deliberately sought to re-enter the world of sexual slavery just because it was familiar and comforting—how could any reasoning, thinking, logical human believe that this was something any woman wanted, that any human could want? And the bit about Walker 'getting the wrong idea' because of her 'mixed body signals' was bullcrap. Alex had been there—she and Olivia actually were the first people to have arrived there after Cam was attacked, she had seen the blood and broken glass and there was absolutely no way anyone, after seeing the CID photos of the studio, would be able to say 'it was a misunderstanding' and she 'wanted it.' That argument just infuriated Clayton—no one looking at Cam now could say that she'd wanted any of this to happen.

He would look up the military's rules about officers testifying in civilian federal court cases and talk to Lieutenant General Johnson, but he didn't see a reason why he couldn't testify himself as a character witness. And as far as her early childhood at Osan—was it too late to ask if Art and Annie Hammond could appear? And Jack? The defense's assertion that she was a loner with no close friends could be refuted by the Hammonds' testimony, as was the defense's reports about Cam's childhood. Although they'd never actually talked about it, Cam looked back at her time at Osan as some of the happiest of her life and if her father had been that callous, surely she wouldn't have been that happy…and surely Art and Annie Hammond would have known.

And Cam was happy on his base. She'd formed friendships, found love, there was no reason for her to have tried to 'escape' her military service to go back into the seedy underworld of human trafficking. The defense's whole idea of the case was preposterous and he fervently hoped he would be allowed to testify, just to defend Cam and paint a different picture of her than the jury was currently getting.

And Kennedy's wheelchair made him furious. How many times had Clayton frozen the drone's video on Kennedy standing there on that rock ledge watching as Rosa dropped Cam into the ocean and Shana screamed? He didn't need the chair. While the sounds of Cam's incoherent screaming just made Clayton sick to his stomach, and the sounds of Shana begging Kennedy to please leave her alone made Clayton want to shoot the bastard, it had had the opposite effect on Kennedy himself. Cam's screams inspired him to new heights of cruelty and Clayton wished there was an option for the death penalty. Kennedy deserved no less.

"The prosecution calls Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara as its first witness."

Alex left the room for a moment, came back with Shana, looking every inch the perfect soldier. She took the witness box, was duly sworn in, and sat down.

"Can you please tell us, in your own words, what happened to you." Abbie's voice was briskly professional, but her smile was warm and sympathetic.

And Shana started talking.

She left out the fact that Alex, too, had been on that mission to rescue the children in the Congo; left out the fact that those children had been Alex's crusade to begin with. She told them only that they were on a humanitarian mission in the Congo to rescue children kidnapped by rogue militia intent on keeping them from testifying for the ICC; told them about their plans, their splitting up to search. For the first time now Clayton heard about their cooperative efforts in the village as Shana made it a point to tell them that Cam and Alex had come up with the idea of teaching the villagers to defend themselves, their efforts to secure the village with roadblocks and the villagers' idea of toll roads. One of the jurors snickered as Shana described making signs for tourists to slow for children so the villagers could have more time to hawk souvenirs.

Then she launched into the discovery of the children, where they'd found them, that it was in the middle of a monsoon and their desperate attempts to escape. For the first time Clayton heard how they'd escaped, the events that led up to the decision to cut the bridge, and the confused moments after she'd first gone in.

"I tried to hold on—Snake Eyes tried to hold on," she said now, her voice soft. "But everything was soaked by the rain, and was harder to hold onto, and I just fell. The water wasn't particularly cold, but I lost my sword and my gun after I went in the water, and there were a lot of rocks and debris under the surface that I collided with. I hit my head on one of those, and that's the last thing I remember before waking up to find myself on the bank, and one of the rogues was performing CPR. I looked past him and I could see Snake Eyes, he was trying to get to me, but he'd had a rough time in the river too and I could tell he wasn't quite coordinated. And they shot at him to keep him away from me, then threw me in the back of a pickup and drove away."

She told them about arriving in Kinshasa, about being taken to the abandoned hospital that served as the sorting point for the human trafficking operations in Africa. Mindful of the fact that the previous summer's activities in the Congo were classified, she didn't let on that she'd known Sandra personally or that the other woman had been carrying a grudge because Sandra had thought Shana had 'stolen' her boyfriend. She instead chalked up Sandra's drug injections as efforts to break Shana, to turn her into a slave.

"I killed her." And she went on to tell the silent courtroom about her escape attempt; how even drugged into compliance, she'd been desperate enough to try escape, had been successful enough to kill Sandra by breaking her nose and driving the pieces into the woman's brain.

Clayton winced as she described the retaliation afterward by the guards who caught her; beaten, battered and injected with a fresh round of drugs before they packed her into the cargo transport bound for Amsterdam. She outlined the hazy recollections she'd had of the time in the container, and Clayton felt his eyes sting as she described in soft tones the two women who had helped her as best they could on the first leg of that journey, stretching to the furthest extent their chains would allow, cleaning Shana with scraps of cloth dampened with their own scanty ration of water, working cramps out of her arms and legs when muscles locked from being chained for so long in one position. And then she told a completely silent courtroom about Mathieu.

"He tried to save me. He tried to hide me. And even when that failed, when he couldn't do it, they gave him the option of keeping silent and they would give him part of the money they got for bringing me in. And I saw that he was tempted, but he couldn't do it, and they killed him. Shot him, right in front of me." Her voice broke. "I never knew who he was, really. Did he have family waiting for him at home? Did they ever know what happened to him?"

Abbie's voice too, was husky as she picked up a sheet of paper. "The officials in Amsterdam wanted to eliminate all traces of your journey so they had the ship, the _Mokata_, sunk on its way back to Africa. There was a man named Mathieu on the cargo vessel's roster, a young man, twenty-eight, with a young son in the hospital for what they thought might be childhood cancer. The money must indeed have been a temptation, Shana, but he couldn't do it. Not even for his son."

"Oh." Shana bowed her head, fighting tears, and as Clayton looked up at the jury he saw a couple of the jurors' eyes weren't quite dry either.

The judge broke the silence. "Do you need a moment, Master Sergeant?" he asked…remarkably gently, for a judge.

"No. No, I don't. I'll be fine." Shana took a deep, shaky breath and then squared her shoulders. "We got to Amsterdam and I was put in a concrete room with three other women, all beautiful supermodel type girls. They kept me chained and drugged, didn't let my arms go even for a moment. And on the day of the auction, I guess they thought I might try to fight them so they told a guard to go and bring what they called 'damaged meat' to the room...and when the guard came back he had Cam." Clayton couldn't imagine what she and Cam had felt that first moment when they laid eyes on each other. For Shana, seeing a familiar face after a month in captivity had to have been a relief…and for Cam, well…Clayton was starting to suspect that the kind of friendship Olivia and Alex shared was mirrored in Cam and Shana. Very, very close, sisters by choice if not by blood.

"I…I was so relieved…but I was scared, I didn't know if she'd been captured in the Congo like I was, but it didn't matter, she was there and we hugged and she told me we had to stay together. It didn't really hit me at the time that she must have had a plan, all along, although looking back now I see all the clues were there, and I should have picked up on it. I would have picked up on it if I hadn't been drugged out of my mind. But they held a knife to her throat while they handed me soap and told me to get myself clean. Can't offer the buyers dirty merchandise. Then they threatened me while they told Cam to wash; at that point they figured out that they could use us against each other and I guess they decided to take advantage of that. When it was my turn to go to the auction block, they started to drag me out, and I fought…I had to stay with Cam, even drugged I understood that, and she fought too. They shocked us…" she drew in another shuddering breath. "They shocked us with cattle prods, but I kept fighting to reach Cam, and she kept fighting to reach me, and they stopped when Damien Kennedy told them they should allow us to remain together because Cam was damaged meat and not worth anything, and this way they could sell us both as a 'package deal'." Clayton tried to hide his anger at what Cam and Shana had been called, but the sudden restless shifting from the sea of blue in the first three rows testified that he wasn't alone in his anger. "He even said that it might be 'fun' to use us against each other…and then he paid two hundred fifty grand for both of us. He said that he hadn't come with the intention to buy any slaves, so he would pay our warehousing and storage fees until he could make arrangements for our transport to wherever he lived. A couple of days went by, and he finally came in with a set of military uniforms, told us to put them on, and drugged us into a deep sleep, saying his plan for getting us through customs was to say that he was taking soldiers home for a burial."

Abbie stirred here. "Let the record show that the prosecution here logs in Exhibit A, a copy of the customs officials' records from Amsterdam. Mr. Kennedy has, in the last five years, taken eight 'soldiers bodies' home for burial in his private plane. We will also log in here Exhibit B, a record of all the flight plans logged into the Amsterdam airport for that private plane. On the dates recorded by customs officials for body burial, the flight plans for Mr. Kennedy's private plane were not to the US or other countries; they were to Fiji, likely to his private island."

Clayton glanced quickly over at Kennedy. Had he looked just a second later all he would have seen was a grim, impassive mask; but in that one unguarded second, the man's face showed sheer, raw fury. _Uh huh. Caught. Can't refute official government records, can you?_ But this created another problem for Clayton; Kennedy was pissed, and when rich powerful men were pissed people got hurt. Or killed. _Would Kennedy have the money to buy off a hitman to try and take the girls out? I think Shana's recovered enough to try and defend herself from a ground attack, but Cam's still vulnerable. And neither one of them would be able to protect against a sniper on a rooftop. I wonder if the Feds have thought of that? I'll have to speak to Ms. Carmichael after we're done._

"We woke up in cells underground, each one of us in a separate cell, though there was a barred door in between them that could be opened if they decided to let us in with each other. Which they did—when Rosa Capelletti injected Cam with sodium pentothal we discovered she was allergic to barbitol-type drugs because she went into anaphylaxis. I…" her voice broke again. "That was the longest ten minutes of my life, performing CPR on her to keep her breathing until the drug wore off enough for her lungs to take over. Thank goodness they only gave her a small dose that only lasted those ten minutes. If they'd given her any more she wouldn't have made it."

The undercurrent of anger in the room was strong now, even if the faces of the Joes was impassive. Even some of the jurors looked sick. No one dared disturb her as she fought her way through her increasingly difficult testimony; their escape and three days spent hiding on the island; their attempt to steal his boat and leave, only to be captured again; the way he'd chosen to punish them. Shana's voice broke again as she told them about Kennedy's threat to have Cam whipped with barbed wire, her belief that he couldn't possibly be that cruel, her absolute shock and horror when she found out that yes, he was that cruel and he could and he did, and then she broke down and cried as she told them that she'd picked up a whip and whipped her friend to keep her from being hurt anymore by the barbed wire. "I didn't want to…I didn't want to. Oh God, I really didn't want to. She was in so much pain, she was hurting and all I could do was hurt her worse but I had to do it because they would have killed her with the barbed wire…"

The judge said, quietly, "Let's call a recess for lunch." And the moment the gavel fell, the door to the courtroom opened and Snake Eyes darted in. The courtroom froze as he ran up the center aisle, ignoring everyone and everything, and took Shana in his arms, cradling her, stroking her hair and holding her close. She leaned on him, sobbed unashamedly on his shoulder, ignoring the wet spots her tears would leave on his dress blues, and the jurors stood up quietly, carefully, and filed out of the jury box.

Clayton stood as Abbie Carmichael did, and said quietly, "Ms. Carmichael, could I speak to you for a minute?"

She looked him up and down, noted the stars and gold braid, then said, "Will you order me in the brig if I say no?"

The ripple of nervous laughter from the Joes broke the tension on the prosecution's side of the gallery and even Clayton felt his lips twitch a little. Even Shana, wiping the last of her tears with a tissue Alex handed her, managed a watery smile. "No, I won't put you in the brig. You're as bad as Olivia with all that sass, you know that?"

"We're all SVU alumni. Had to have it to get into the SVU, it was a requirement." Abbie quipped, then sobered. "What's on your mind?"

"Did you see Kennedy's face when you told the courtroom about the flight plans for his private plane?"

Abbie tilted her head. "What would you suggest, snipers on the roof?"

He blinked; she'd made that jump faster than he would ever have given her credit for. "I don't know. I just want to make sure nothing…bad…happens during this trial." Vivid in his memory was the image of Gaviria trying to strangle Alex in the Congressional hearing room back at the White House—and Shana defending Alex.

Abbie raised an eyebrow. "I did look into getting you a permit for your people to wear weapons—you're military after all—but I couldn't manage it. Let me talk to the Feds, though, and we'll see what we can manage." She gestured to the door. "Let's take advantage of this break and have a chat with the FBI Field Agent who is here with the forensic anthropologist who's testifying to the bones under the fishing platform."


	4. Chapter 4: Shana's Testimony

**Chapter 4: Shana's Testimony**

Clayton liked FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth the minute he saw him.

And it wasn't just because the man took one look at the stars and braid and said, "Good afternoon, Major General," and saluted right after the woman had introduced herself as Dr. Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist.

"Just call me Clayton," Clayton grinned as he saluted back.

The slender brown-haired woman next to Booth objected. "But Booth, that would be inappropriate given the fact that Major General Clayton Abernathy is clearly a person of high rank and still on active duty and you are no longer in the military—"

She stopped because Booth had laid a hand on her arm. "Bones. Let me handle this, huh?"

Clayton grinned at them both. Booth wore an air of amused, resigned exasperation, as if he were used to conversations like this one on a daily basis; he reminded Clayton somewhat of Dash's exasperation when Allie tried to correct him on something he did. The thought made his grin wider as he sat at the table with Abbie.

"General Abernathy—Clayton—has concerns about his people's safety while testifying during the course of this trial. I was wondering if this is a valid concern and what we might be able to do about it." Abbie didn't waste words on pleasantries; she was very direct.

"Kennedy is very, very rich. And he's pissed. And in my experience when rich powerful men get pissed off people start dying. Those are my soldiers testifying in that trial. They have been through more than any two people should have to go through in a lifetime and I'd like to make sure they come out of this alive. So you understand my concern."

Booth nodded. "I understand your concerns. I doubt anything can get them in here, but they are vulnerable coming to and from the courthouse."

"This is a very paranoid way of thinking," Brennan said.

"Our lives are dangerous. Dr. Brennan, the work we do is dangerous and paranoia will keep us alive in combat and special mission situations. Admittedly, yes, this is paranoid thinking in the middle of New York City during a highly-publicized trial, but my peoples' safety during this fiasco is my responsibility and I would rather be considered paranoid than to find out later that I should have been worried and wasn't."

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst." Booth nodded.

"In transit isn't a problem, the vehicle in which those testifying is traveling—that big Hummer out there—has special modifications done on it by my garage crew that virtually turns it into a small tank. No one will be able to get them inside it. It's that brief moment of vulnerability between getting out of the vehicle and getting into the courtroom."

"We can have armed observers on the rooftop of the building scanning the crowd, but I think your concern is rather more for the possibility of long range weapons fire?" Booth's eyes narrowed as he considered the possibility. "As a former Ranger sniper myself, I can see the opportunity."

Clayton nodded; he'd already guessed that Booth had some military experience from the way he walked, looked, talked. "I plan on giving my soldiers leave to come into the city if they are off for the duration of the trial, to form the same kind of 'honor guard' that we displayed this morning. If my duties permit it, I will be here as much as possible also. Every one of my soldiers has been trained to the limits of their physical capacity in hand-to hand, and Master Sergeant O'Hara is herself lethal without even needing to resort to the use of weapons. The same with Master Sergeant Snake Eyes, her fiancé."

"The soldier who walked in as soon as recess was called and she leaned on?"

Clayton nodded. "They're both martial arts masters and are fully capable of killing with their bare hands if need be. I'm not worried about a ground assault. But my other soldier, Corporal Arlington is in very fragile physical condition right now and is vulnerable as a result. Master Sergeant O'Hara is perfectly capable of defending herself and Corporal Arlington if need be, and Corporal Arlington is also married to Specialist Ironknife, so there's the extra bond there, but none of those skills and that determination can stand against a sniper's bullet that they'll never even see coming."

Booth was busy thinking. "Helicopter in the air. Sniper on the rooftop covering the ground below. We can scout out the likeliest positions from which a hidden sniper might be able to strike and put eyes on each of those roofs, then step up security on the ground leading into those buildings. And, you know, since Master Sergeant O'Hara has active FBI clearance, she is allowed to wear a weapon. The soldiers can't, however. Sorry. But she could if she wanted to."

"I'll let her know," Clayton said. "Not that she isn't perfectly lethal with her bare hands, but it might help her peace of mind."

"I'll alert courthouse security that if she does have a weapon to let her pass," Abbie said briskly as she got up from the table. "All right, shall we get back to the courtroom?"

Shana was composed as she returned to the witness stand, but the judge seemed sympathetic nevertheless. "Master Sergeant, we understand this must be difficult, and the court is not unsympathetic. If you feel at any point that you need a break simply tell us." Shana nodded gratefully.

The afternoon testimony was even harder than the morning's. Shana picked up where she left off, telling them what had happened after Cam had passed out from the whipping Shana had been forced to give her friend. She spoke softly, but her words were clear in the deathly-silent courtroom as she described being injected with massive doses of Oxytocin and Anafranil, about the drugs making her 'willing' for Damien Kennedy. Shana didn't remember much of the rest of that night, had no idea what she'd done, but her next clear recollection had been Cam, coming in the next morning and told to pleasure Shana until the overdose of drugs wore off.

Remembering how Cam's voice went flat, detached, when she spoke of her past, as if it were something that happened to someone else and not herself, helped Shana get through the rest of the afternoon. Most of the rest of her own testimony was in that flat voice, as she described Rosa and Damien separating Cam and Shana, Shana then waking up to find herself on blankets, offered food, and a bath—and her voice went flat again as she described Kennedy nearly drowning her in the bathtub until she agreed to use the name he'd given her. "Testarossa," she said now. "My red hair, and my physical uniqueness in the slave market—he called me Testarossa."

Abbie interrupted here. "Prosecution is admitting into evidence as Exhibit C the brochure from that exclusive auction. While the picture is of an actual Ferarri Testarossa, the name itself literally translates to 'red head'. And then when you read the description of the 'car' up for auction, the clues are there." She started to read it aloud, more to give Shana time to scrub at her eyes with a tissue and try to compose herself. "Up for auction; vintage Testarossa, in excellent condition, responsive, all original parts. Strong and has a mind of her own, can be difficult to handle but will be a priceless acquisition for the right owner. Some patience is needed to tame the Testarossa and break it in, but results will be well worth it as this is the most unique offering to pass through our market in a very long time." Abbie looked up."The brochure is clearly referring to Master Sergeant O'Hara. For those who may be unfamiliar with an actual auto auction, the auction would have listed a lot number, vehicle identification number, manufacturer's date, vehicle mileage, horsepower, car history including former owners, and other information one would need to have to purchase a car. You can see the lack of that information in the brochure. 'All original parts' indicates that she has no artificial limbs or plastic surgery enhancements; 'strong' and 'mind of her own' and 'difficult to handle' indicates that this is not a wiling slave, that she has been forced into the underworld, hence the reference to 'breaking her in'. You can see from this, which was found in Damien's office, that he clearly knew she was an unwilling slave but still made the trip to Amsterdam to see her for himself—and eventually bought her."

Shana resumed her testimony, calmer now. "They split us up for two days—Damien was aware that Cam and I knew each other rather better than our cover story, that we'd grown up together in New York, indicated. Throughout our captivity he interrogated me constantly trying to find out what our connection was. I didn't tell him because I knew the moment he found out we were both Army officers he would kill us; and Cam didn't tell him because—although I didn't know this until later—that the GPS chip implanted just behind her ear meant rescue was going to be able to track her and find us. He finally got annoyed with my refusal to answer his question and dragged me out onto the fishing platform on the north face of the island to watch Rosa throw Cam over—she tied a weight to Cam's ankles and a rope to her wrists and then pushed her off the platform into the ocean. The weight dragged Cam beneath the water and she couldn't come up until Rosa turned the winch to bring her back up. And he asked me how we knew each other several times, until the last time he told me he wouldn't bring her back up, he'd let her drown, if I didn't tell him. So I…I told him a half-truth; we were humanitarian workers on a mission in Africa when we were captured by slavers. Separately. And we reached the market separately, but that was how we knew each other. He brought her back up and she wasn't breathing…she wasn't conscious…and Rosa brought her up, then sent her into freefall until just before Cam hit the water. The sudden stop dislocated Cam's shoulders. She screamed…oh God…"

She took a deep breath and looked up, her eyes suddenly hard. "I don't think I've mentioned this yet—he doesn't need that wheelchair he's sitting in. He walked just fine all over that damn island. His legs worked well enough to stand in order to watch while his guards and hirelings threw Cam over the cliff. He's not paralyzed from the waist down."

Abbie interrupted again. "Prosecution is admitting into evidence Exhibit D. Once the GPS chip that Corporal Arlington was wearing stopped moving somewhere in the Fijian Island chain, a small reconnaissance team composed of Staff Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett and Sergeant First Class Conrad Hauser went to Fiji posing as research students. They had an experimental miniature aerial surveillance drone with them, which captured this video footage." She cued up the white vidscreen, the bailiff by the door dimmed the lights, and in silence the jury and the spectators watched as Rosa threw Cam off the platform once, twice, as Damien, standing on his own two feet, spoke to Shana. There was no audio, not from this high up, but everyone could see the garish, indecent maid outfit, could see Shana refusing something, shaking her head, saw Shana finally hang her head, defeated, say something to him, and then saw Rosa bringing Cam up, unconscious—and dropping her again with enough force to dislocate her arms. Cam threw her head back to scream, and no one could miss the unmistakable look of agony on her face.

When the lights came back up some of the jurors looked pale and shaken, and one stared at Kennedy with outright loathing. Clayton noted that with satisfaction; he was pretty sure that that particular juror, at least, was convinced of Kennedy's guilt and wouldn't hesitate to find him guilty. There were a couple of other s who looked just as uneasy; good.

Shana continued with her story, voice flat. "When we both woke back up Cam finally told me about the GPS chip she had, and that it would bring our unit to rescue us. She hadn't told me that before because she was worried what I might say about it while Damien and Rosa were pumping me full of drugs, but she said she couldn't keep it a secret anymore because she didn't think she was going to survive. I…" a hard swallow, a glint of tears. "I got mad at her. As her commanding officer, she's supposed to tell me about those things; were technically in a POW type situation and I needed to know all information so I could make decisions…and I yelled at her, got angry with her. Kennedy heard us talking, heard me use her last name only, and deduced that I hadn't been entirely truthful and he wanted the truth, once and for all. He…he crucified me. Tied me down and nailed my wrists to the crosspiece…here…" She pulled up the sleeves of her jacket, eyes blinded by tears, and showed the jurors the dark red scars left by the nails puncturing her arms. "It…hurt…" she tried to hold back her sobs, but couldn't now. "It hurt…and he just left me. For a long time, and there was just so much pain…he came back a very long time later, asked me again, but I was in so much pain I couldn't answer him—my mind just blanked out, I couldn't even remember what it was I wasn't supposed to tell him. He brought over this container with bees in it, grabbed one in a pair of tweezers, got it angry and held it next to my skin so it would sting me. He used a lot of bees, all over me, and then when he pulled the cross back upright…the pain was so bad that I don't remember anything until I woke up back at base."

Abbie said quietly, "You'll hear testimony from the first-responder military EMT who stabilized Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington at the scene what their injuries were and how long it was likely that Master Sergeant O'Hara was left nailed to the cross. I can tell you that his medical opinion is if they had been a day later neither woman would be here talking to us about their experiences."

Mutters from the jury box, and those definitely were some anger and loathing-filled glances sent Kennedy's way from jurors. Clayton even saw Kennedy's defense lawyer looking slightly shaken. _What, you client didn't tell you what he really did? If you're surprised at this, what else did he not tell you about?_

However, the defense attorney looked calm and unruffled when he rose from his seat. "Master Sergeant O'Hara, I'm sorry for what happened to you, and Clayton noted the ring of sincerity in the man's voice. "But I have a couple of questions. Did you know who my client was when you were purchased at the slave market?"

"Not at the time."

"But you knew my client from before all this happened. You're one of the famous Atlanta O'Haras, the youngest daughter of their five children, the brilliant lawyer with the promising career who gave it all up to go play soldier. But because of those family connections, you knew my client."

"We had met before but—"

"You had, according to several photos of prior events my client visited, attended several events in Atlanta to which my client was invited. The first time you met him was fourteen years ago, at an event hosted by the Atlanta District Attorney's office, a business mixer. My client has a photo of you in a low-cut, dare I say rather provocative, black dress." A picture came up on the viewscreen; Shana in a black strapless short sheath, a generous but not immodest (at least not to Clayton's viewpoint) amount of cleavage showing above the bustline of the dress. _Wow, she looks good there. How old was she? Like, twenty?_

"And then you met him again at a function in Atlanta honoring active-serving military—you were, at this time, a Private." Another picture, this time of Shana a bit older in dress blues, looking smart and confident, saluting an older man in military dress blues…and beside the man was a younger, smiling Damien Kennedy. "And then again, a few years later at the Governor's ball. You brought another soldier with you, someone from Fort Benning to which you were assigned at the time, but he spent very little of the evening at your side and seemed simply to wish he were not there altogether. Leaving you free to flirt with my client, as is seen on this photo." Shana saw herself laughing, standing in a circle of people, nursing a wineglass, and on the far right of the picture Kennedy sat in his wheelchair. It was the same event from which she had a picture taken by Conrad (she was wearing the same dress); but this photo had to have been taken by someone else because in the background she could see Siobhan trying to flirt with Duke and failing. Miserably. Duke had a slightly-pained expression that would have made Shana laugh if this hadn't been such a serious matter.

"So you've met my client on three occasions prior to this, yet you claim not to have recognized him at the slave market. It would be reasonable to assume, I suppose, that it may not have been my client who purchased you and Corporal Arlington at the market, that it was in fact someone claiming to be him?"

"No, it is not possible. The man sitting at that table next to you is the one who bought Cam and I at the slave market in Amsterdam. I didn't recognize him because I didn't remember having met him before."

"But that's impossible that you did not recognize him since you have taken care to appear at every Atlanta social function possible between assignments and while on leave. My client contends that he has met you before, you recognized him, and have been trying to flirt and seduce him into marriage with you once you leave the military. Having failed on these prior attempts, you are now resorting to trumped-up legal charges to force him to marry you."

"I don't attend those functions to find someone to get married to!" Shana said hotly, her face flushed and her green eyes snapping in anger. "And it would certainly not be your client!"

But the defense attorney was already sitting. "No further questions, Your Honor."


	5. Chapter 5: Snake Eyes' Testimony

**Chapter 5: Snake Eyes' Testimony**

Abbie stood. "For its next witness, prosecution would like to call Master Sergeant Snake Eyes. I will say that this is not this soldier's real name; however, his real name is classified due to the nature of his military operating specialty, so we will use his codename here. Also, I'd like the court to know in advance that he is mute, having lost his voice in an accident several years ago—the events surrounding that will be part of his testimony as it has some relevance to the case. We have an interpreter available who will translate his AMESLAN for the court. As well, there is a copy of his written testimony available as the jury goes in to deliberate should a review of his testimony be necessary."

The door opened and Snake Eyes marched in, dressed in his class B's, eyes front, every inch the disciplined soldier. He marched down the center aisle of the courtroom, ascended the witness box, signed a brief 'I do' to the oath, and seated himself. "Master Sergeant Snake Eyes, thank you for being willing to testify for this court. We have an interpreter fluent in AMESLAN with us, so please feel free to converse in whatever manner is most comfortable for you." Snake Eyes gave a quick nod, and Abbie continued, "Please explain to the court who you are."

_My name is Snake Eyes, and I am a Master Sergeant with the same unit stationed at Fort Hamilton as Master Sergeant O'Hara. Jointly we handle training of recruits in hand-to-hand combat and martial arts disciplines, as well as unconventional weapons combat. I am Master Sergeant O'Hara's fiancé and I was part of the rescue team that went to the island to rescue her._

"You are her fiancé? How long have the two of you been together?" And Clayton suddenly saw Abbie's strategy. She'd been aware that the defense was going to try a smear campaign, making it seem like Shana and Cam's fault, and she was carefully trying to structure her questioning to not only present the real facts of the case but also to provide refutation of the defense's assassination of Shana and Cam's characters.

_We have known each other since she was posted to the unit nearly ten years ago. Our commanding officer, General Abernathy, asked for her to be assigned to us so that hand-to-hand combat training could be taught from the viewpoint of the male and also from the viewpoint of the female. Since she was the first woman assigned to our unit she had a hard time gaining acceptance from the other male soldiers until she faced me on the mat and proved herself every inch my equal when our match ended in a draw. Since then she has had no problems with respect from our unit and General Abernathy considers her a valuable, irreplaceable asset to the unit._

_We were friends from the beginning, she recognized something in me that she liked, and I recognized in her someone who was my equal in every way. We trained together, we fought together, but I didn't realize I had grown to love her until a mission some years back, which is classified so I can't give details. But Master Sergeant O'Hara was caught in a helicopter going out of control, her seatbelt was stuck, and while everyone else jumped, I tried to protect her in the crash. She survived—and my face was badly burned in the fire that resulted from the crash and I lost my voice. She stayed with me throughout my recovery, bullied and coaxed me into feeling better about myself, and loved me even after it was discovered that I no longer had a voice with which to talk again. None of it mattered to her. We've been committed to each other for ten years._

"Had you talked about getting married?"

_The topic came up but we were both committed to our careers. I did purchase a ring for her right around Thanksgiving of last year with the intent to propose to her over Christmas, but then this mission came up and she was captured. It wasn't until this happened that I realized that time is short, life is precious, and every possible minute I have, I want to spend with her. I didn't know how much I depended on her, cared about her, loved her, until this happened, so as soon as she recovered after we rescued her from the island, I asked her to marry me. And she said yes. _There was a broad smile on his face, the smile of a man in love. Clayton wondered if he looked like that when he thought about Olivia, then grinned himself. Yes, he did, Allie had told him that. And Ettienne got that look whenever Alex's name was mentioned, and Dash looked like that when Allie was mentioned.

There were smiles from the jury box too, and even Abbie smiled; Clayton was absolutely sure that was a sincere smile, not a professional one that was part of the careful strategy she'd worked out to win this case. "Congratulations on your engagement. You are planning on getting married?"

_When this is over, yes_. Snake Eyes turned hard eyes toward Damien Kennedy, and there was no mistaking the poison in his glance. _So his assertion that she is trying to trap him in marriage with these 'trumped up charges' is wrong. For the last ten years there has been no one but me for her, and there has been no one but her for me._

"So this whole fiasco has to have been difficult for you. Her going missing, and then being on the rescue team that found her…can you tell us about that?"

_I couldn't think of anything but her while she was gone. I realized just how much I loved her, depended on her…all the times when we argued over something little and I said things to hurt her feelings, or I refused to go to a movie with her because I was self-conscious about my face and how I looked and so she wouldn't go either. Little joys, things she wanted to share with me but I was self-conscious and she wouldn't go because I wouldn't…and our cabin in California, where we go when we're on leave…it was originally mine, but we've shared the work on it, shared ideas, made it a personal space for both of us. But I never put her on the lease. While we're on our honeymoon I'm going to change the deed so she is on it._

A deep breath. _When we got to the island and I saw her nailed to that cross…the bottom dropped out of my world. She looked…she looked dead, I couldn't imagine that anyone could have survived being crucified. _There were tears running down his face, and there wasn't a single face in the jury box that didn't look sympathetic; somehow, seeing Snake Eyes crying unashamedly was making an impact on the jurors and the spectators. _There were ropes around her wrists that kept her from moving her arms much, because when she was crucified at Damien Kennedy's order the nails were carefully placed so that they didn't damage muscles, nerves or blood vessels. I believe his intention wasn't to kill her, he was going to take her just to the edge of death and then take her down, let her recover just to hurt her more. _

_I was part of a team that included First Sergeant Conrad Hauser, Staff Sergeant Alison Hart-Burnett, and Specialist Ironknife as well as two of our unit's medics, Medical Specialist Edwin Steen and Thomas Larivee. We found Corporal Arlington first—we stepped into the boathouse and she'd been left to hang for an extended period of time by her hands with boat anchors tied to her ankles; her shoulders were terribly swollen from having been dislocated. Damien Kennedy was right there, with his pet doctor Hans Keil and Rosa Capelletti; the Naval troopers and FBI agents who escorted us took them into custody. Charlie and Lifeline stayed to help stabilize Cam, and Stretcher, Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett, First Sergeant Hauser and I went to find Shana. They got her down—I wasn't even really paying attention, as soon as her cross was on the ground I went to her head to try and keep her still and focused on us while Duke and Allie and Lifeline got her arms off the nails and got her free of the cross._

Abbie cued up the videoscreen and put up a photo. "Prosecution is admitting into evidence exhibit E, a series of photos of the facilities on Kennedy's island. This photo you see here is the subterranean torture chamber that Damien had constructed in an old lava chamber in the heart of the extinct volcano that forms the island." She paused. "The next photo I will show you will be graphic—it was taken with one of the naval troops' cell phones as Master Sergeant Snake Eyes, Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and First Sergeant Hauser were attempting to get Master Sergeant O'Hara off the cross. This was taken as the cross was laid on the floor." Having issued that warning, she cued the next photo on the computer.

One of the jurors gasped in horror and covered her mouth; the male juror sitting beside her put a hand on her shoulder and patted it awkwardly. Snake Eyes didn't look at the screen; instead, he stared hard at Damien Kennedy, who simply shifted in his chair, looking calm and unruffled.

Snake Eyes's fingers flashed. To everyone who knew him, the fast, jerky movement of his fingers signified his anger. _Her recovery has been…hard. Hard on her, hard on those of us who love her and care about her. When I was recovering from the helicopter accident, she was by my side every step of the way. She sympathized when I needed sympathy, she held me when I needed a human touch, and gave me a kick in the butt when I started to feel too sorry for myself. Her recovery…between the massive amounts of drugs and physical trauma, she was in so much shock that she didn't talk for a few days. She wasn't consciously aware of what was going on around her. She just lay and reacted. She finally regained conscious thought, conscious movement, but she then became aware of what she looked like, bruises, welts, scabbed cuts, scars…and she didn't want anyone near her anymore. Anyone. Including me. Her pushing me away was the hardest…I wanted so much to just hold her and make it all go away and I just couldn't._

_ She recovered, but she still has a way to go. And I will be with her every step of the way, beside her for the rest of her life, and to even think that she would consider trying to entrap Kennedy into marrying her, after the horrible, inhuman things he did to her…_He looked directly at Damien, and there was something cold and hard and implacable in his eyes._ I will kill her myself to keep you from touching her again. It would be far kinder than anything you are capable of doing._

Abbie said quietly, "No further questions."

And to everyone's surprise, the defense lawyer rose from his chair and said, "We have no questions for this witness."

The judge nodded to Snake Eyes. "Please step down, Master Sergeant. Thank you for your testimony and thank you for your service to our country." Snake Eyes simply nodded, stepping down from the witness box and marching, with a measured tread, across the floor to exit the room. He never looked at Damien again.

Abbie rose, her voice steady as she said, "Prosecution calls Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett to the witness stand."

Allie was duly sworn in and she sat quietly, collecting her thoughts, trying to figure out what to say. Finally, she looked up helplessly. "I don't know what to say, where to begin. This whole winter and spring have been a nightmare. Starting from the moment we at base found out that Shana had gone missing, when we learned about the accident that swept her away from the rest of the unit in the Congo—it's been a nightmare since then. Shana O'Hara is one of my best friends—we were the only two women in our unit for a long time, and I'll admit that while she wasn't the type I usually called friends, well, when you're around that many guys it becomes an 'us against them' situation." A hint of a smile. "But when I first met Corporal Arlington when General Abernathy brought her back from a training class in which prejudice against her race made her a target for abuse and mistreatment during one of the most difficult parts of a soldier's training, I liked her immediately. She's a complex person, a study in contradictions; a small, delicate looking young woman who has an incredible talent for dancing and yet chose to become a soldier; someone to whom so much has happened, someone to whom life has been massively unfair, and yet she keeps getting up, keeps finding the strength inside her to do the things that few people would think of.

"At fifteen her Aunt and Uncle took her to a vacation cabin in western New York and forced her to become a child sex slave to a huge ring of pedophiles who paid exorbitant sums of money to hurt, abuse, torture and rape her. Somehow she survived all of that to become an intensely empathetic, extraordinarily giving girl, giving everything she had to her life and the people around her. She is unfailingly fair to the people around her, even when they aren't fair to her. This trait has quickly made her one of the most-liked people on base, and that was one of the things that cemented her friendship with Shana. They both share a love of swordsmanship. Before she came I'd pick up a sword and spar with Shana, but she knew my heart wasn't in it. When she met Cam it was like two kindred spirits meeting—they are alike in so many ways, although outwardly they are very, very different. And then Shana went missing.

"We all discussed various plans for getting her back, but nothing seemed plausible. Until Cam came up with the unthinkable—she would go deepcover, find Shana and we would get them both out with an implanted GPS chip. None of us could believe what we were hearing—out of every person on base, she would have been the last one we'd have thought would come up with a plan like this. We'd all been aware that she was struggling with PTSD due to her earlier experiences as her Aunt and Uncle's cash cow, and she was proposing things that we weren't sure we could even do…" Allie closed her eyes, remembering an afternoon in the Girls Only workout room and Cam crying out that she seemed to be the only one willing to do what it took to bring Shana back.

"The slave market…I can't begin to describe what that was like. Human beings, men, women, and worst of all, the children, packed into pens, haggled over like…like goods in a store. The slave dealer wanted a sample…" her voice broke. "He handed us ten thousand dollars and we had to walk away, leave her lying on the floor crying with the pain. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do…"

She went on to tell a silent courtroom how she and Duke had felt having to leave Cam there; about the two weeks of waiting, about the trip to Fiji with the drone, about their anguish and rage and pain as they saw Rosa dislocate Cam's shoulders, about Kennedy placidly watching. She described the rescue from her point of view, the anguish as they saw Cam hanging there with dislocated shoulders; about their numb shock when they saw Shana brutally crucified. The pain they all felt watching both women try to struggle back; how Cam had been in so much agony that her husband hadn't even been able to sleep in the same bed with her. How she was so weak she hadn't been able to get out of bed and Charlie had had to carry her to and from the bathroom.

The defense had no questions for her either, but they did have questions for Duke, who sat and ground out the words of his testimony through gritted teeth, staring at Kennedy in open hatred. "Yes, I went to the function with Shana. We were friends at the time, nowhere near the kind of friends Shana and Snake Eyes are, but friends. She hated going to these Atlanta society events, she only went because her mother wanted to parade her in front of all the eligible bachelors in Atlanta, and seriously I didn't realize I had met…Mr. Kennedy…until I saw the picture. Most of that function was spent fending off the pointed advances of Shana's sister, Siobhan—Shana and her sister don't quite see eye-to-eye on certain things, and Siobhan told me once she couldn't see why Shana wasn't in love with me; she was. She spent the entire night trying to seduce me, and I swore to Shana afterward I would never ever attend another party in which her sister was included."

His disgusted face actually caused a smothered chuckle from one of the jurors in the back. "But Shana was never serious. Marriage was the last thing on her mind, falling in love was the last thing on her mind. She was, to me, like a butterfly, flying along with a mind of her own and determined not to let anyone or anything chain her down. When we parted ways at Fort Benning, I had no idea that I'd meet her again years later in New York…and I never once expected that she was going to fall head over heels for Snake Eyes. This theory that Shana's doing this to entrap Kennedy into a marriage is just a story—and a ridiculous story at that. There has been no one but Snake Eyes for her since she met him, and no one but her for Snake Eyes, ever. As much as I regret letting Shana go, he makes her so happy that I can't do anything but let her go—I never once saw her look at me the way she looks at him. And…I'm okay with that. If he didn't worship the ground she walks on I'd be trying to steal her away from him…but they adore each other and anything I tried would just get her mad at me." He smiled crookedly, ruefully. "Trust me, no sane male would want Shana O'Hara mad at him. We've all seen her chop carrots."

Several jurors laughed outright at this; all women. The men just looked pained and shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. The defense seemed wholly incapable of cross-examining Duke; the same testimony coming from all of them—that Shana and Snake Eyes were committed to each other and trapping Kennedy into marrying her was the last thing Shana would ever do—had taken all the wind out of the defense's sails.

The judge called a halt after Duke's testimony; it was getting towards late afternoon and everyone felt exhausted; they had all been on a rollercoaster of emotions that day. "We'll pick up tomorrow. Court is dismissed for the day."

Snake Eyes was as relieved as anyone as they headed for the Hummer outside, again with the honor guard of Joes. Their presence seemed to intimidate the firestorm of media, and in the melee Snake Eyes felt a hand on his arm. Alex. "Come on. Shana can go back to base with the others, she'll be fine, but I wanted to get you alone. I brought my car, hurry up and get in."

Mystified but willing to trust her for now, he got in Alex's Mustang.


	6. Chapter 6: Ring

**Chapter 6: Ring**

"You said in there that you and Shana are getting married," Alex said as she turned a sharp left at the next light. "I've seen the two of you together too much, too often, to think that either of you are going to change your mind about that. So I wanted to give you guys a present a little early."

_Present?_

"We're going to pick out your wedding rings."

He became aware after a couple of moments that his mouth was open, and closed it.

Her eyes flashed mischievously over her broad smile. "Liv told me that would be your reaction." She turned right at the next light, then said, "I found this store down here that specializes in custom-made jewelry. Considering yours and Shana's lifestyles, a traditional wedding ring isn't going to be practical—I already saw her have to take off the engagement ring you bought her in order to practice with her swords. And Cam's got that skinny little gold band Charlie bought her when they got married on the reservation and even that's already accumulated scratches and nicks and dents. So a traditional gold band isn't going to work for you two."

He hadn't even thought about that.

"I know you didn't. Guys rarely ever do. The ring you gave Shana is absolutely lovely and fits her personality, but it's not practical for both your lifestyles."

_So what do you recommend?_

"This jeweler's we're going to is actually a blacksmith—the old-fashioned type, heating and hammering steel. He makes unique items from all kinds of metal and one of the things he's known for is Damascus steel wedding bands."

Damascus steel? Snake Eyes pondered that as Alex drove. He'd always loved Damascus steel swords; the process of taking a bar of steel, hammering it thin, then folding it, hammering it thin again, and folding it again left ripples of the lighter steel edges in a solid steel blade; aesthetically pleasing, yes, but the swords were also durable and strong and held an edge better than anything he'd had. Shana appreciated them for the same reason, though he was willing to bet she appreciated their beauty more than he did; she'd bought the first Damascus blade for the dojo. He'd scoffed at the 'beauty' but had been pleased with the edge and the weight—Damascus swords were a bit heavier than the average stainless steel blades currently on the wall in the dojo, but if made with a hilt that balanced the weight of the blade, they were unmatched perfection. He always used one when he and Shana put on shows for the new recruits or when they just wanted to show off for the Joes.

They were very expensive, however, and there were only two in the dojo's collection. Shana had talked rather wistfully about getting a matched pair for their shows, but unless they had them specially made it seemed unlikely that they would ever have a matched pair, and they were so expensive that he couldn't even begin to guess how much two specially made swords would cost.

Alex pulled up in front of a modest little storefront practically hidden behind a much larger sub shop; the smells reminded him that he hadn't eaten, and he promised himself a quick trip in when they were done so he could grab dinner for himself and Shana—she'd been eating dinner at base but would welcome the supplement to her meal; she was constantly hungry lately and was starting to look less like the starved waif she'd appeared to be when she'd first woken up.

The interior of the shop was well-lit, and more spacious inside than he would have thought from looking at the outside. There was no hodgepodge of clutter, like he'd seen in other martial arts supply stores; counters were set back against the walls, and there was a large mat on the center of the floor (though with walking space around it.) A practice dummy sat next to a barrel of wooden practice swords, and the dummy showed signs of use.

Alex led him toward a small counter in the back of the dojo/shop and he looked down sat the glass case. The mellow gleam of fine rippled steel looked back at him from beds of fine black velvet that held thin bands of varying sizes; he forgot everything and just stared. Yes, these would be perfect; a little weight so he could never forget that it was there, durable enough to handle his and Shana's lifestyles and careers, and beautiful enough to put on her finger.

_They're perfect,_ he signed.

The shop owner, a small Asian man with horn-rimmed glasses, bowed respectfully as Alex translated. "Thank you," he said. "This is a hobby for me, I usually make swords but wedding rings are a sideline for me." He looked at Snake eyes closely. "You are one of the soldiers involved in the trafficking trial, right?" Alex looked up, startled, but the man just smiled. "The reporters were quite thorough about getting camera shots of the group going into the courthouse today. And the scars are quite distinctive."

For just a moment self-consciousness almost made Snake Eyes duck his head in embarrassment, and then he thought about what he was doing. It was a comment. It wasn't negative, wasn't a criticism of him and who he was. And even if it was, what did it really matter? He was here to pick out wedding rings for the only woman he had ever loved and would ever love, and beside that everything else was inconsequential. Nothing mattered but her. So he straightened his shoulders, lifted his head, looked the man in the eye. _Yes. The woman on whose finger I want to put this ring was one of the victims._

"My congratulations," the man said softly. "It can't have been easy knowing that and being courageous enough and loving her enough to face that road to recovery with her. There aren't many that could…or would." He gestured to the case. "Let me know if you see something you like."

Snake eyes looked through all the offerings. They were all beautiful, symbolic of the strength of commitment he and Shana had for each other and practical as well, but the only one he saw that he really liked was a Claddagh ring, the traditional Irish ring with two hands curled around a heart. He picked it up with regret, turning it over in his hands. It would be fitting for an Irish girl, and he had always liked the design, but the other features, the small gaps between hands and the crown at the top of the ring, would pose a problem. If the ring got turned around on the wearer's finger, the edges of the design could catch in the _sageo_—the wrappings—on a sword hilt, snagging it. It could be a nuisance, at the least; dangerous, at the worst.

The shopkeeper looked disappointed when he put the ring down, and he hoped the regret on his face would convince the man that it wasn't that he didn't like it, it just wasn't suitable for their lifestyles. Alex's grasp of sign language was nowhere near as complete as he would have liked it to be, and he was thinking rather desperately of trying to write what he was trying to say—as inefficient as that was—when the man's face suddenly cleared, lightened. "Ah. It is not the goods, but the design. The edges of the ring can get caught in _sageo._" Snake eyes nodded, looking relieved.

"What about a slightly raised design on a flat band? Or the design etched into a flat band. No edges to catch, and the advantage to Damascus steel bands is that I can make it very thin and flat but not compromise the strength."

It was the perfect idea, and Snake Eyes knew instinctively Shana would love it. He just had no idea how much it would cost to have the ring custom made. If a whole Damascus steel sword could cost so much, how much would custom rings be? But the man was shaking his head. "Do not worry about cost. Here," and he selected two flat bands with rounded, finished edges. "I can etch the design onto any of the bands here. It will cost you only the price of the ring itself as you see it here. It's the least I can do for members of our military who serve well and honorably and who have such courage. It would be an honor."

There was nothing Snake Eyes could say to that.

As the shopkeeper wrote up the receipt, he looked around the walls at the various swords on display. Many of them were in carbonized steel and colored steel, though Damascus steel predominated, and in all sizes and types; katanas, ninjas, wakizashis, daitos, tantos, tachis. There were bladed staffs, and a couple of the twin-blade batons that Cam favored. He was about to ask if he could see them when something else caught his eye.

Two Damascus steel katanas…but they were like nothing Snake Eyes had ever seen. Both in blackened steel, but on one, an extra chemical had been added to the steel bar to give the edges of the blank a red hue; with subsequent folding of the metal, the Damascene folds had added red lines to the blade. All Snake Eyes could think about when he saw that was how strands of Shana's red hair next to her black body armor resembled the fold lines in that blade. Both hilts were wrapped in red rayskin with black and red silk _sageo_ wound around it and the _saya_, right under them, were polished lengths of black wood.

The shopkeeper noticed what he was looking at, and reached up wordlessly for the sword, laying it carefully down on the counter. Snake eyes picked it up, marveling at the perfect balance. A master's sword, he knew that right away; the kind of sword a master swordsmith made only a few times in a lifetime, and that every swordsman always dreamed of having. This was the kind of matched sword that Shana would have loved but Snake Eyes knew they would never be able to afford.

He still couldn't resist; at the shopkeeper's nod, he stepped away from the counter, stepped on the mat in the middle of the floor, and tried an abbreviated sword drill. The sword moved like an extension of his arm, as if it were alive and waiting for him to tell it what to do, and at that moment he'd never wanted a sword so badly in his life as he wanted these two swords.

But he was here for rings, not for swords, and he carefully (if reluctantly) handed the sword back to the shopkeeper_. I'll have to come back,_ he said, and the man nodded with a little smile and put the sword back in its cradle on the wall.

He was still thinking about them later as he ordered dinner (Alex suggested it; she was hungry, said that Liv had to be, too, and so Alex ended up buying dinner for Liv, Clayton and Ettienne, and Snake Eyes bought for Shana, Charlie and Cam. Though still weak, Cam's strength was slowly coming back, she didn't really need the wheelchair to get to court, but Alex and Abbie both insisted it would be good for the trial so Cam was patient with it. Back at base, she and Shana had started working out; no sword drills for Cam, yet, but Shana was working on stretching exercises and yoga to try and stretch Cam's skin a little, to get some mobility back in joints warped by scar tissue. And Snake Eyes suspected that she and Cam were also working on psych issues as well. But Shana's nightmares had stopped waking her in the middle of the night screaming, and Charlie had said that Cam's nightmares weren't as bad either, and both men understood that their girls were helping each other.

Court the next day started with the same 'honor guard' type display they'd shown the day before; while a couple of the faces were different due to some having duties they couldn't duck out of or exchange, they'd been replaced by others. And Shana had a gun on her hip, worn courtesy of her FBI connections. Snake Eyes also noticed a sniper on the roof of the building watching the crowd below, and although he didn't turn his head around to look at neighboring rooftops (if anyone really was out to get Cam and Shana, this would have been a dead giveaway to a would-be hitman that the Feds had anticipated the move) he knew that there had to be snipers on those rooftops as well.

Abbie Carmichael called Dr. Temperance Brennan to the stand, and for the first time they all found out who she was. A highly-skilled expert in the field of forensic anthropology, currently working as a tenured associate for one of the largest museums in America, she and her team usually just curated bones for museum exhibits, but they were respected consultant experts for the FBI, scrutinizing bones and human remains for various federal cases.

"These bones were all female," Dr. Brennan asserted. "Female, between sixteen and twenty-one. Out of the twelve sets of bones recovered from the ocean under the fishing platform, eight were Caucasoid and four were African. However, certain bone structures led us to the conclusion that these Africans also had Caucasian genetics and may have been very light-skinned, perhaps enough to pass for white. I feel perfectly confident in saying that without knowing anything about the facts of the case, I would have suspected they were a serial killer's victims due to genetic similarities."

Dr. Huang took the stand next. "Having been given the facts of the case without knowing the victims or the defendant's names, I constructed a profile. According to that profile, the man who had purchased these women to use as sex slaves and brutally tortured them nearly to the point of death was male, somewhere between thirty and fifty years old, and wealthy. I reached the race conclusion because the remains found in the ocean and identified by Dr. Brennan and her team were all the same gender, about the same height and weight and although the actual age varied, I was reasonably certain that they all could have appeared either older or younger in order to fit into the killer's perception of his ideal victim, a clear sign of a serial killer's attempt at choosing victims that would appeal to him.

"He would be narcissistic, egocentric, in a position of some power where he would have control over a sufficient portion of his own life, his money, and his time. He would most likely be the head of a company or firm, because of his need to control everything around him. He would have been an only child, having never learned any compassion for any other human being, may not have received adequate attention from his parents as a child, would also be likely to seek out attention by manipulating others' perceptions of him as being someone to like or admire. He would be very good at reading people, good at saying exactly what they want to hear, good at lying, good at hiding his true nature. Very good at hiding the fact that he has a god complex, enjoys playing with peoples' lives and money, and as the forensic accounting team learned from looking at his accounts, doesn't care who he ruins. The company he owns now was his father's company—upon taking control he cut off all retirement pensions and funneled the money—the interest from which those pensions would be paid—into his personal account."

"That's a lie," Kennedy hissed. "It's a lie. I never played fast and loose with anyone's money. Those old pensioners were stealing my money, I just took it back. If they weren't working they shouldn't draw a paycheck."

"But the money that you say is yours they worked to bring in. It was as much their money as it was yours—in fact, it was yours only by virtue of your parents having left it to you; if they had left the company in a trust fund, you would never have had the power to do anything like that. One of those old pensioners whose money you cut off was an accountant who had served your father for thirty-six years. I wonder if he lost his job because he noticed that some of your math didn't add up." When Kennedy didn't answer, George continued, "It didn't occur to me that he would use an apparently nonexistent disability—the wheelchair he sits in now—as a ploy to gain sympathy and manipulate others perceptions. As we have so obviously seen, he doesn't need it."

Jurors shifted in their chairs; mutters came from the gallery behind the defense table. Clayton, sneaking a peek across the aisle, saw some of the people looking slightly dubiously at Kennedy. _Not so sure now, huh?_

Huang left the witness box, and Abbie called Emergency Medical Specialist Edwin Steen to the stand. Lifeline testified, in tight, clipped tones, to how they'd found Shana. Abbie cued up the photo that had been taken by the Naval trooper as Lifeline described how they'd found her.

"The nails had been placed in her arms so carefully that it hadn't nicked any of the blood vessels and muscle groups in her arms. It did touch one of the major nerve groups, so it was decided to cut the head off the nail and lift her arm clear of it. The process of cutting sent vibrations down the nail, jarring against the nerves, and…" he closed his eyes and visibly fought for composure. "It was one of the hardest, most horrific things I'd ever had to witness in my fifteen years as an army medic. Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara is a longtime member of this unit and a very close friend, and seeing her like that was…difficult."

"There's an understatement," someone in the gallery muttered, and to Clayton's surprise, it wasn't from the prosecution's side, it was someone from behind Kennedy's table. Kennedy himself turned and glared behind him, a look of such anger even Clayton was taken aback. He must have recognized the voice that said that, he thought, and even as he did, a man stood up in the far back row and edged surreptitiously from the defense's side of the room to the prosecution's side.

It was a small move, but oh, the look on Kennedy's face…he definitely knew the man.


	7. Chapter 7: Cam's Testimony

**Chapter 7: Cam's Testimony**

Abbie asked the judge if they could recess for an early lunch, as the next person she called would be Corporal Arlington, and the judge granted the request. Abbie disappeared as soon as the judge granted the request, presumably to warn Cam she was going to be called next and to finalize strategy.

Clayton wandered out into the hallway, intending to go grab a sandwich or something with Courtney (he was curious as to how the recording was going, although he'd carefully avoided the mess last night, knowing that if they were caught he would be asked and he had to maintain plausible deniability) but to his surprise, the man he'd seen get up from the defense gallery and cross to the prosecution's side was just outside the door and took a few steps forward, holding out his hand. "You're the commanding officer for those soldiers in there."

It wasn't quite a question, but Hawk answered it anyway. "Major General Clayton Abernathy. And you are…?"

"Marcus Bennett, Chairman of the Board of Directors for Kennedy Capital."

Ah. Now Kennedy's anger made sense. This man would have been the next person down the chain of command in Kennedy's company—the fact that he'd apparently 'switched sides' would have been a huge blow to Kennedy and his ego.

However, Clayton couldn't rule out the possibility that this could be a fact-finding, fishing attempt by the defense, so he was guardedly polite when he shook the guy's hand. "Yes, those are my soldiers."

"I haven't even heard the second soldier's testimony yet and already I'm pretty sure I don't want to," Bennett said quietly. "What I heard in there, yesterday and today, is pretty gruesome. I won't say I'm not surprised at the charges, but I'll also say that Kennedy is perfectly capable of every one of those heinous acts, and then some. The FBI profiler's assessment of Kennedy's personality was spot on. Kennedy doesn't care about anyone but himself. He's arrogant and rude to everyone who isn't at the same social rank he is, and even with those on the same social strata, his kindness, generosity, and consideration stops at others who can do things in return for him. If you can't do anything for him, in whatever way, then you're not worth getting to know or talk or help." He looked at Clayton directly. "I realize you think I might be on a fishing expedition. Let me assure you that I'm not. I'm not going to ask you any questions. I just…I wanted you to know that we know your soldiers aren't lying, that Kennedy is perfectly capable of doing the things he's been accused of, and we aren't going to support him. I'm going to have a word with the board about reinstating the pensions once Kennedy goes to jail. And either way, his career with the firm is finished. He might be able to remain a stockholder, but his days of being able to make decisions for the company are over."

Knowing that Kennedy was going to lose his financial base filled Clayton with vicious satisfaction. A cold-hearted bastard like Kennedy didn't see others as human so what he'd done to Shana and Cam wouldn't leave a dent in his ego, but having his company yanked out from under him, losing his income and assets…that was what would hurt the most. If the only thing he understood was money, then that was the best place to hit him.

He stopped Abbie on her way back into the courtroom and told her what the man said, and saw satisfaction, allayed by worry, fill her eyes. "I'm glad to hear that his company knows him for what he is, and that they'll cut him off after the trial, but I'm also worried about what that will mean for my restitution request."

"Restitution?" Clayton hadn't even thought about that.

"Yes. Restitution. After what your soldiers have gone through, major General Abernathy, I'm asking for restitution to cover medical expenses."

"They don't need to touch his money. We take care of our own." Clayton was indignant.

"I know you do. But there are things not covered by your medical. And besides, it's the principle of the thing. Kennedy should pay for what he's done to them, and he can certainly afford it—he owns millions of dollars worth of property in various countries worldwide, none of which he's going to be able to take with him to jail. It's only fair to pay his victims for what he's done." Abbie sighed. "Come on. Court's about to start."

Alex wheeled Cam's chair into the courtroom , held it for her as she climbed into the witness box and was sworn in. "I volunteered to go with the team to the Congo. Navigation—especially in unfamiliar terrain—and tracking are my military operating specialty and is something I'm good at. My commanding officer at my prior assignment at Fort Benning thought I would be good for long distance recon patrol work and sent me to survival school training, which was where I met General Abernathy. He invited me to join his unit when he was done because he said he could utilize my talents better, and so when the Congo mission came up I welcomed the chance to go out there with a team to rescue kidnapped children.

"When Shana disappeared we were all helpless. She is a major, irreplaceable part of our team, our unit, and a very close personal friend; I couldn't imagine what base would be like without her, and so when we got back I came up with a plan to go undercover to try and find her.

"I was in a human trafficking situation before. I lived at Osan Air force Base with my father, a US Air Force vet, until he died in a plane accident. The US military tracked down a couple of relatives, my Aunt and Uncle Park, and sent me to live with them in New York, where I thought I could train for a career as a ballet dancer. Instead what they did was take me to a vacation estate in Western New York and held me captive for three years while taking large sums of money from people for the privilege of…of molesting…me." Her voice was flat, hard; Clayton could see how much of a struggle it was for Cam to talk about this part of her life. "But because of that, I knew what was required of a 'slave'. I knew how to behave, how to act, what to expect…and it was the only way I could see to get into the underworld of the slave market and get her back.

"Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and First Sergeant Conrad Hauser took me to the slave market in Amsterdam and dropped me off; it was hard for them to watch. It was even harder for them to have to turn and leave me there, knowing what I would face, knowing that even with the tracer implanted on my scalp, there was still a very good chance they would never see me again. I knew it, too; despite what I told everyone at base about there being only a limited number of people in the world who could afford to buy Shana—Master Sergeant O'Hara—and needing to keep a damaged meat slave around so that if she did something they had to punish her for they wouldn't hurt her resale value by scarring her, I wasn't at all sure that I would be able to find her; and once I found her, to be able to stay with her." She raised her head and looked at Kennedy steadily, ignoring the steely hatred in his eyes. "That is the only thing I have to thank you for; suggesting to the slave market dealers that we be sold together, and then purchasing us together. I don't know if you saw the two of us fighting to reach each other and just found some spark of pity down in your heart for us, or if you just wanted know we'd have to watch each other be tortured, but we were sold together and you bought us together. For two hundred fifty thousand dollars."

It was the first time the jury had heard that, and there was a shocked gasp from one juror, instantly stifled. Kennedy shot a glance at the jury box, but since all of the jurors looked dismayed or unhappy or shocked, he couldn't pinpoint who had spoken and he returned his gaze to Cam, sitting in the witness box.

"He made us get dressed in military uniforms by threatening Master Sergeant O'Hara until I got dressed, then threatening me until Shana got dressed. He gave us an injection of something he said would put us to sleep so we'd pass customs, and I don't know how much time passed but when we woke up we were in some sort of underground torture chamber, in cells off the main room."

Her words slowed as she tried to describe what it had been like to watch them inject Shana and interrogate her, praying that her friend wouldn't tell them how they knew each other; then they came to her, injected her. "I knew something was wrong when my chest tightened and I couldn't breathe; I figured I must have had a bad reaction to the drugs, but then I kind of lose track of what happened after that. My next conscious memory is of Shana looking down at me, looking relieved, and my chest hurt because she'd been doing CPR—but as soon as they knew I was conscious they pulled her away from me, and then …"

She drew in a shuddering, harsh breath. "I'd never been raped while completely paralyzed before. It was…nothing I had ever gone through before prepared me for just how violating that was. When we woke up we were alone, and we set about trying to short-circuit the electronic cell locks and escape. We finally succeeded, and we found our way outside through the door of the laundry. We tried to escape but it became pretty clear that we were on an island and there was no easy way off. Added to that. Shana was going through withdrawal from all the drugs they'd been pumping her full of and I couldn't take a chance to try and swim for the next closest island, so I found a tidal cave on the east side of the island and we hid there for three days.

"She was spiking a high fever, mumbling and delirious, and I couldn't leave her for a moment, I couldn't risk her calling out and someone finding us, or her dying, so it was a few days before her withdrawal fever broke and I felt safe leaving her to go find food. One of the native islanders saw me, but instead of reporting me, she helped me—she told me where the surveillance cameras were, and she gave me a table knife that I then sharpened to give us a weapon. It was on a later hunting expedition that I saw Kennedy return to the island on his yacht-and I thought if Shana and I could just get on it, we could steal the boat and get away. And I was so focused on that that I never thought there'd be someone still on the boat, and we were caught. Shana was still really out of it, so there was no point in punishing her; they tied me between whipping posts and whipped me until I passed out. I'd…I'd had that happen before, when I was my Aunt and Uncle's little cash cow…but this was different, harder, I…Goddess, I almost wanted to die except that would have left Shana alone, and I couldn't do that…"

She described in a flat monotone that somehow hurt even more to listen to than crying and tears, how Rosa had taken the skin cultures from her leg. She described how, when they'd awoken, Shana had been given a whip and told to hurt her…and how Shana had refused and how the barbed wire whip had been used on her until Shana agreed to do what she was told. And here Abbie interrupted, warning the jury that they were going to see something graphic, and then she cued up a photo of Cam's back, taken as she lay unconscious on Doc's operating table right after their rescue. One of the jurors gulped and paled visibly; even Clayton was horrified. He'd known she'd come back in bad shape, but not this bad…and then another picture, Cam's back again. Healed now, but with the threadlike, writhing lines created by keloid scars, warping the skin and tightening it so that one shoulder was noticeably higher than the other. In the shocked silence Abbie Carmichael said evenly but with a tinge of anger and sorrow in her voice, "This is what Corporal Arlington's back looks like today after a couple months of healing. You'll shortly hear testimony from Medical Specialist Thomas Larivee, who was the first medical professional to evaluate Corporal Arlington during the rescue and he will catalogue for you the extent of her injuries. Suffice it to say that she is not on active duty at the moment and most likely won't be within the near future; Medical Specialist Larivee's professional opinion is that she will require months of rehabilitation and several surgeries to correct not only the surface scarring, but also scarring deep in the muscles of her back. Corporal Arlington is an accomplished dancer and enjoys dancing in her spare time—according to Specialist Larivee, it is unlikely she will ever dance again."

And Cam's composure cracked. She buried her face in her hands and started to cry, emotionally worn, drained, exhausted, and Clayton felt anger rising in him at Abbie Carmichael. How could she tell Cam that in front of a courtroom full of people? She knew how Cam was likely to take that news, how it would shatter Cam's dreams…why had she done that?

And then a sound of rustling cloth, and Clayton stared at the gallery behind Kennedy in disbelief. Six men, dressed in sharp designer suits, who had been sitting in the second row behind the prosecution table got up as one, en masse, and headed for the back of the prosecution gallery where Marcus Bennett sat. And Kennedy went berserk.

He got up out of his wheelchair, face red with fury. Gone was the façade of the mild-mannered corporate exec framed by two scheming women for a crime he hadn't committed; the Kennedy who stood in the courtroom was showing his true colors. "Get back here," he snapped at the six men who'd moved their seats. "You are my employees. I pay you to say what I want you to say, think what I want you to think, do what I want you to do. You're slightly more human than these two whore slaves sitting up there, so act like it and get back here!"

The judge rapped his gavel. "Mr. Kennedy, you are out of line! Defense, calm your client down and keep him in order, another outburst like that and I will fine him for contempt of court charges. I would also like to remind the prosecution that this court will make its judgment based on facts, not emotional impact, so please don't drop any more such bombs in my courtroom to disrupt and prejudice the proceedings. Corporal Arlington," he addressed Cam directly, who was trying to get herself back under control and regain her composure "Please let me know if you need a short recess before we continue."

Cam shook her head, clearing her throat and scrubbing away the tears as she squared her shoulders. "I'll be fine, thank you. I'm sorry for the outburst. It won't happen again."

The judge smiled kindly. "It's all right, it was a shock and I understand completely. Feel free to let me know if you need a break and I'll call one." He turned back to the courtroom, cleared his throat. "Mr. Kennedy. You will maintain control of yourself while in my courtroom or I will charge you with contempt. As you have so clearly demonstrated just now that you do not need the wheelchair, you will henceforth not be allowed to use it in my courtroom."

Kennedy was nearly purple. "And yet that slave bitch up there can use one," he sneered elegantly.

Abbie shot to her feet. "Objection, your Honor, my client is a Corporal in the US Army, not a slave bitch. And Medical Specialist Larivee will testify to the fact that as she is still recovering, she gets fatigued and exhausted easily and it is therefore helpful for her to travel long distances in a wheelchair. However, if your Honor requests it, we will avoid its use."

"As much as I would like to allow Corporal Arlington to use the wheelchair, I do need to maintain the impartiality of this court and reduce emotional impact on what is a highly-charged trial. Therefore, yes, I would ask that as it is not completely necessary, please refrain from using it."

"So noted." Abbie sat back down.

"With all that in mind, I am going to call a recess for the rest of the day. Court will reconvene tomorrow morning at nine." The gavel fell, and everyone in the gallery rose.

The door at the back of the courtroom opened, and Charlie stalked in. His air of dignity and bearing silenced the courtroom as he came up the aisle and stepped up to the witness box, holding his hand out to Cam. She took it thankfully, and leaning on him, made her slow way out of the courtroom on visibly-shaking legs.


	8. Chapter 8: Cross Exam

**Chapter 8: Cross Exam**

After the judge called the court to order the next day, he added some strict instructions. "I will tolerate no more outbursts from the court or the gallery. Nor will I tolerate movement from one side of the room to the other. You will take your seats now and remain in those seats; should you want to move elsewhere you can do so when the court recesses for lunch.

"I will not tolerate profanity. Counsel, please control your client, and irregardless of his personal views, any further reference to the prosecution's witnesses in derogatory or profane terms will result in punitive fines levied by the court. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Your Honor," the Defense Attorney nodded from behind the table.

"Good. Now, seeing as movement is difficult for some of the prosecution's witnesses, I will allow Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Cameron Arlington to remain in the courtroom for the proceedings. As they are active-serving members of the military, and as it is my understanding that their commanding officer is here, I have every confidence that they have the self-discipline necessary to control themselves and maintain the dignity of these proceedings, and should they not, I have no doubt their commanding officer's presence would encourage them to refrain from outbursts. Also, while I did forbid the use of wheelchairs, I can see that Corporal Arlington is still recovering and she would be more readily available for cross-examination if seated in the courtroom. Now, with all that said…Prosecution, if you could continue, please."

Cam ascended the stand and continued recounting her experiences. It was, Clayton thought, a good thing that the judge had called a recess the other day; Cam had been an emotional wreck the evening before and Shana and Snake Eyes had awoken to hear her screaming from nightmares in the middle of the night; Doc had had to make a house call and give her a sedative so she could sleep. She still looked pale and tired and not at all like herself today, and the jurors looked sympathetic. Even the judge let her proceed at her own pace, refraining from comment during the long pauses when Cam was fighting to keep control of herself.

And it was good for the case, too. After the shocker of the day before the jury had had time for that to sink in and come at this with a fresh mind, only to be even more deeply shocked as they now heard Cam recount how Rosa had cut away the scar tissue over her chest, replacing it with the cultured skin grafts that she had skinned Cam's leg for earlier in her captivity. Abbie didn't show those medical photos in open court, but she did show the picture of Cam's thigh where scars from the skinning still showed, then showed pictures of the remaining tissue graft still growing in a petri dish. There was a sort of recess here while one of the jurors ran for the bathroom to be sick; as she was out of the courtroom and court was recessed, the spectators were treated to a tender moment when Charlie ascended the witness stand to hand Cam a tissue and give her some water and hug her tightly. She buried her face in his jacket, not crying—quite—but definitely drawing on his strength to control herself. And when the jurors were all seated and court resumed, the defense side of the gallery was decidedly more sparse and the prosecution side was a bit more densely packed.

And Kennedy looked even more pissed, and as Cam continued to recount the 'fishing' incident that the jury had already seen on the drone footage, her voice shaking as she described the terror at being thrown bound into the water, the horror at seeing the skeletons, and then the shocking agony of having her arms dislocated.

And then in a low voice and dropped eyes, she described what had followed. She'd learned what they did with slaves they killed, thrown off the platform; how she knew that the tracer chip would still function for a time below water, leading the rescue team there to save Shana, if not her; how she'd given up hope of surviving the experience and simply focused on Shana's survival, how she'd finally told her commanding officer about the tracer chip. She didn't tell them that Shana had gotten angry with her, but Clayton saw Shana's slumped shoulders and tear-bright eyes and knew his fiery Master Sergeant was regretting having gotten angry with Cam.

And then the juror who had gotten sick the first time ran and threw up a second time when Cam described Rosa coming for her; how Cam, drained and exhausted and completely without hope, had done the one thing she hoped would end it for her, lashing out at her tormentor. And she described the retribution for that; being hung with boat anchors tied to her ankles, and her last memory being of excruciating pain and hallucinations of her husband. Some of the jurors had damp eyes by the time her quivering voice finished that part of the tale, and there was a pause of a couple of minutes while she gathered herself before telling them about her fragmented memories of their rescue, about seeing Charlie actually there, and being just aware enough to tell them where Shana was before Stretcher sent her into a medically-induced coma to stabilize her before they moved her.

There was silence for a long moment after she finished. Abbie finally roused herself enough to say, "Thank you. No further questions." And Clayton braced himself as Kennedy's lawyer rose from the defense table.

"I am sorry for what happened to you, Corporal Arlington," and to his surprise, Clayton heard the ring of sincerity in the man's voice. "I realize this has been difficult and I admire your courage. I just want to clear up a few things. Now, you said that Master Sergeant O'Hara was a 'major, irreplaceable part of the team. Do you consider yourself similarly important to your unit?"

"No." Cam's response was immediate.

"And why not?" When she didn't answer right away, he pressed, "Is that because your-self-esteem and your sense of self-worth are so low?"

"Objection!" Abbie protested as she shot to her feet. "The witness's ego is not the subject of this trial!"

"But it points to motive and reason, Your Honor," the lawyer said, and after a moment the judge nodded.

"I'll allow it, but only up to a point. Please continue, Counsel."

The lawyer turned back to Cam, who squared her shoulders. "I have just recently joined this unit. The mission in the Congo is the first one I went on with them. Master Sergeant O'Hara has been with the unit for a decade now, and is intimately involved in selecting and training newcomers to the unit in hand to hand. She has multiple military operating specialties, each one of which is a valuable asset, where I have one. And my husband has been a member of this unit for nearly eight years and his MOS is the same, so my skills, while helpful, are not unique within the unit."

"So you considered yourself expendable."

"Yes I do."

He turned to face the courtroom, pacing. "So you were expendable and an outsider, a loner—"

She interrupted. "Expendable, yes, in that we have others in the unit who can do what I do. An outsider and a loner, no—General Abernathy, our commanding officer, has very strict views about teamwork being necessary to the cohesiveness of the unit, and he encourages us to make friends and develop interpersonal relationships. Not fraternizing, but he emphasizes that if you care for your fellow soldiers, if they are personal friends, we are more likely to be able to stay alive and together in a hostile situation. Team-building exercises, unit morale, and group training exercises are a very important component of the way our unit is run."

"So would you say that your plan to go deepcover was motivated solely to get back Master Sergeant O'Hara because she was irreplaceable, and not because you felt like an outsider, because you felt alone, because you felt expendable?"

She stared at him in affronted dignity. "Absolutely not. Shana is my commanding officer and mentor and a very close personal friend—the first female best friend I have ever had in my life. Having once been in a human trafficking and slavery situation, I couldn't leave her there. I knew what she was going through because I'd been there myself and I felt that this plan was the best one to get her back, and no one could have pulled it off except someone who had already been there, knew how to act, what to do, what to say, how to behave."

"So you were the only possible candidate to take on this mission."

Cam frowned in puzzlement, but said, "Yes."

The lawyer paced. "So let's review. You're not a very important member of the unit, you're not unique, you have no skills that anyone else in the unit doesn't have. So you're a perfectly ordinary soldier except for this one instance in your past that makes you different and made you essential to the success of the mission. A mission which you came up with. So do you think that subconsciously you might have come up with the idea for this mission in the hope that this will either somehow validate you, make you important and irreplaceable instead of mediocre?"

"No!" Cam's voice was shocked with an edge of anger. "How you could even think that…she was my friend, and I did the only thing I could think of to help her!"

"The only thing you could think of. Which just happened to involve something with which you had unique knowledge of and which no one else could do. Or maybe I'm wrong? Your childhood experiences—you were the sole child of your father, you had all of his attention, and then later in the vacation cabin with your Aunt and Uncle, you were the sole focus of everyone's attention. You crave attention, but you also need direction, someone to tell you what to do, and not being unique anymore in a unit full of soldiers who were all better, stronger, more experienced, irreplaceable, made you feel inferior and weak so you came up with this plan not only to look like a hero and have all eyes on you, but also so that you could escape the military life, a life you'd tried but decided it wasn't for you, and go back to something comforting and familiar—those S&M relationships you had become familiar with. With a Master telling you what to do, what to say, where to go, how to dress, to micromanage every inch of your life, to never have to make decisions for yourself anymore and be the focus of one person's entire attention…that was what you wanted."

"I never…I didn't…" she floundered helplessly, taken aback by the harsh words, the stunning accusation. Clayton, too, was bristling; how dare the man…he knew that there were women who enjoyed role-playing, but to insinuate that Cam, of all people, after what she'd experienced, what she'd gone through—it was incomprehensible. Unthinkable. He badly wanted to ask Abbie to put him on the stand so he could give these people an objective, third-party look at Cam and Shana's abilities and positions in his unit, and resolved to ask her about that the next time the court recessed.

Kennedy, damn his eyes, was sitting there looking smug. Clayton wanted to slap that look off his face; he thought he'd made a point, thought he'd managed to cast a little doubt on Cam's motivation. The lawyer, in the meantime, was pushing some more. "Did you like what happened on the island, Corporal? Was it easier just doing what you were told, blindly and obediently?" he leaned in, eyes intent. "Isn't this exactly what you wanted?"

Cam's eyes went from bewildered and confused to cold and angry in one moment. Her hands flew to the buttons on her jacket, then up the shirt. "Let me tell you something, Counsel," she hissed, her inflection making it sound like a dirty word. "No woman ever wants this!"

Clayton had already had an inkling of what she was doing, so he wasn't really surprised to see her stand and yank both jacket and shirt off in one move. He winced at the sight of her scarred back as she turned and showed the courtroom her scars, the ropelike keloid scars writhing across her back, warping the skin, raising one shoulder as it twisted the other. This time the gasps of horror and the mutters from the jurors were audible; it was very clear that the tightening of the skin as scar tissue thickened and hardened had deformed her back and joints, and several of the jurors looked distinctly ill.

Clayton glanced quickly at Kennedy, and froze. There was such a look of…hatred? Rage? Fury?...on the man's face. But the predominant emotion, lust and desire, made his skin crawl. _Son of a bitch is getting his rocks off seeing this! _Kennedy shifted unobtrusively in his seat, just slightly, but the next moment he reached down, under the table, and Clayton had to throttle down the instinct to jump over the bench and strangle the sick bastard.

However, Clayton wasn't the only one who noticed. One juror, a little old lady who had to have been well in her eighties, stood straight up, and her high-pitched voice cut through the subdued muttering of the courtroom. "That man is getting hard at seeing her!"

Every juror looked at him. Every eye in the room turned to him, saw him with one hand on the table, one under it.

And the room exploded.

"I will kill him if he touches her again."

The defense lawyer raised his eyebrow. "Be careful, Specialist Ironknife. That could be construed as a threat."

Charlie didn't even blink. "It was a threat. And I meant it. I will kill him if he ever touches her again." He shook his head, and for the first time, Clayton looked at him, really looked, and saw how hard all of this had been on Charlie himself. "I was horrified when she told me what she wanted to do, but I understood why she wanted to do it. She and Shana have developed a very close personal friendship outside of the realm of work, of the unit and our jobs as soldiers, and she is a woman who never does anything halfway. Whatever she commits herself to, she gives it everything she has, from her dancing to her friendships to the unit. Despite what she says about not being irreplaceable—none of us is absolutely irreplaceable, not even Master Sergeant O'Hara—General Abernathy handpicks each soldier for this unit, and he picks only those who he feels will be able to fit in and has skills that the unit needs. So none of us is irreplaceable, but there is no such thing as an expendable soldier in our unit, nor is there any way anyone could look at Cam, look at the way she performs her job, and call her 'mediocre'. Except Cam herself—she is harder on herself than she needs to be, drives herself harder than any drill sergeant ever would, and although that striving for perfection is part of what makes her a good soldier, it also drives me nuts as her husband." A ghost of a smile, answered by smiles from the jurors and a ripple of amusement from the gallery. The prosecution's side was packed, now; there were few people left in the defense side of the gallery. Something that seemed to irk Kennedy to no end; he kept looking at the prosecution gallery, particularly the six men from the board of directors for his investment company who were now squeezed into the bench behind Clayton. "And in a way, she is unique. At her prior posting, she was carrying out support for an LRRP—long range reconnaissance patrol. While we have several other Specialists in our unit who also performed similar duties, their specialties are in other areas; survival and communications, and my specialty is in tracking. Hers is in navigation, and let me tell you, in unfamiliar terrain in a part of the world where the star patterns are different, that is a difficult and valued contribution. So no, she is not expendable and we never leave anyone behind."

He pinned the defense lawyer with a glare. "You can say all you want, think what you want, about Cameron Arlington wanting a structured familiar life where everything is regimented for her and she never has to think for herself. If that were indeed true, she would never have come up with this plan on her own, let alone faced all of us down and argued for the logic of her thinking. She had the courage to defy us, to go into this against the displeasure of her commanding officers and at great personal cost to herself, and carry out a plan that, while successful, has cost her so much personally. She fought for what she believed was our only chance to get her friend back, and she succeeded, but it will be months of rehab and surgery before she'll be able to resume even a semblance of 'normal' life. And as for saying she wanted to be the center of attention—she already is. The center of my universe, my world. I cannot imagine living a life without her." His gaze returned to Kennedy. "And I meant what I said. If he touches her again I will kill him."


	9. Chapter 9: Kennedy's Testimony

**Chapter 9: Kennedy's Testimony**

**Author's Note: For reader reference, in a Federal criminal trial, the prosecution is NOT required to fully disclose and share all evidence with the defense prior to trial. A federal prosecutor can 'surprise' the defense with evidence…as you will see from this chapter.**

"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

Kennedy, standing in the witness box impeccably dressed and unruffled, raised his right hand. "I do."

"Please be seated," the defense attorney turned and started to pace the floor as Kennedy sat. "Mr. Kennedy, can you tell us in your own words just what happened?"

Kennedy sat back in his chair comfortably. "First off, let me say that I am completely horrified at the treatment that…the two witnesses…received on my island. I had no idea that my property was being used for human trafficking. I am often away on business, and in my absence Hans Keil and Rosa Capelletti run the place for me. I had no idea that they were trafficking in slaves.

"I first bought the place about ten years ago when the idea of having a quiet tropical retreat to which I could invite the foremost specialists in the world acquainted with my type of injury—the partial paralysis I sustained in the automobile accident years ago—while they were treating me. It was for that reason that I had an entire operating theater equipped with the basic tools for their trade built at the island, so that any doctor I invited would have what they needed there without having to resort to a mainland hospital in some foreign country unless they wanted specialized tests run. Hans Keil was one of the foremost neurosurgeons in Germany, and he was available to come to my island, so I invited him. Rosa as well—she professed to have some skill at nursing, and she was pleasant-mannered and quiet, so I saw no reason not to add her to my complement at the island. They have lived there for ten years and I have never had a problem with either of them.

"I had no idea what was going on. I have no idea where the skeletons, the bodies under the fishing platform came from. I knew that Hans and Rosa had some unusual tastes in consensual sexual activities, and so when I came to my island this time and found two women whom I had never seen before, both Hans and Rosa assured me that the women were there voluntarily, that they were consensual participants in these sexual games. And I never thought to question them, something that I regret now."

_Sure you did. And pigs might fly_. Clayton controlled himself with an iron will, fighting not to let his disgust and contempt show on his face. The man was openly lying; how he could stand there and say he didn't know, when they all had already seen drone video of him openly ordering Cam dropped into the ocean…it was incomprehensible.

"You have to understand that due to my infirmity, my choices in physical company are necessarily limited. However, I am human just as you all are, with the same needs and desires. So while you may think it reprehensible, unfortunately the only way I can achieve physical satisfaction is through visual cues.

"Neither Testarossa nor Hole ever indicated they were not there willingly—"

"Excuse me," the judge interrupted, leaning forward and fixing Kennedy with a steely gaze. "What did you just say?"

Kennedy flushed. "Neither of the two women—"

The judge shook his head. "That is not what you said. Please repeat for the court exactly what you said."

Kennedy flushed red. In an angry mutter, he snapped, "Neither Testarossa nor Hole ever indicated they were not here willingly."

"And by those…names…I take it these were the designations for Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington?"

Kennedy mumbled an affirmative.

The judge nodded decisively, and his voice acquired a hard edge. "This is the last time that I will inform you of this, Mister Kennedy. You will refer to the defendants by rank and name. Any more such slips and I will charge you with contempt. Is that understood?" At Kennedy's nod, the judge said icily, "Continue."

"Neither Master Sergeant O'Hara nor Corporal Arlington ever indicated they were not there willingly, never once indicated that they were there against their will. They also never once told me they were active-duty serving American military. If I had known that I would have repatriated them at once and turned Hans and Rosa over to authorities."

_Sure you would, _Clayton thought acerbically.

"Ho—Corporal Arlington—had extensive scarring on her body which led me to believe that she was one of those extreme masochists who get off on extreme sensations. She submitted to whatever Hans and Rosa wanted, never once told us she was not here willingly and never tried to escape."

"And yet when you arrived back at your island a week ago, both Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington were missing, were they not?" the defense lawyer asked.

"When I asked about the sla—when I asked Rosa and Hans about their absence, they told me that the two women were playing a hide-and-seek game around the island. They were hiding and we were supposed to find them."

"And what did Rosa and Hans tell you when you found them aboard your yacht?"

"They had sneaked aboard, unable to find food on their own, and when the crew member on the yacht found them and 'caught; them, they surrendered willingly."

"And were they punished?"

"It was a game! I protested against any sort of punishment but the two women insisted that the losing team pay the penalty. Since it was Hole's—Corporal Arlington's—idea to try and sneak aboard the yacht and steal it, she paid the price when Tes—Master Sergeant O'Hara—chose to punish her for their both being caught."

The judge rapped his gavel. "I am fining you one hundred dollars for referring to Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington in derogatory terms."

Kennedy gasped. "I never—"

"Yes, you did, just now, you called them both slaves, you called Corporal Arlington Hole, you started to call Master Sergeant O'Hara Testarossa and caught yourself just in time. But that was two offenses and you're being fined for that. Your next offense, the fine will double."

Kennedy glowered, but said nothing.

His lawyer continued briskly, "So you claim you didn't know they weren't here willingly, but what did you think when you saw Corporal Arlington hanging in the boathouse by her wrist with anchors tied to her ankles?"

"I was in shock. I felt that even if she had been willing, hers and Rosa's games had gone too far and it was impossible for me to continue observing their 'play'. I felt that if she was indeed finding this to her liking, this meant she needed mental help, psychological help, and I gave Rosa the order to get her down, treat her, and then I was going to find a psychologist, because she was plainly mentally ill, to like such extreme activity."

"No further questions," The defense lawyer retired to his seat as Abbie got up.

"Now, Mr. Kennedy. You say you never knew these women were here unwillingly?"

"Yes, that's correct."

"So how do you explain the fact that the slave dealers say it was specifically you who purchased both women at the slave auction?"

"Perhaps Hans and Rosa used my name at the dealers' in Amsterdam. I don't know."

"And the flight plans for your private plane in Amsterdam customs? Do they have access to your plane too?"

"I have on occasion allowed them use of my plane, yes."

"And you're absolutely sure that it was not yourself who purchased Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington in Amsterdam? And may I remind you that you are under oath and compelled to reply with the truth?"

"I was not there."

Abbie returned to the prosecution table, picked up a digital recorder, and held it up. "Prosecution would like to admit into evidence Exhibit E, audio recordings from the time Corporal Arlington entered the dealers' market in Amsterdam until the time both women were rescued from Kennedy's island. Corporal Arlington was fitted with an implanted GPS chip so that her unit could track her and bring both of them home, but along with the GPS chip a small microphone on a micro datachip also recorded audio from during her capture. The following is from the slave dealers in Amsterdam." She hit the play button.

A male voice shouted, "I bid twenty-five thousand Euros for both!"

Another voice. "Thirty thousand!"

A different voice. 'Forty thousand!"

The first voice. "Forty five thousand."

A new voice, quiet but with an undercurrent of power. "Fifty thousand." Damien Kennedy's voice.

The first voice, again. "You always bid on the best ones, Damien. Leave some of the good stuff for us. Sixty thousand!"

Damien's voice. "Seventy-five thousand."

Abbie clicked off the recorder. "Mr. Kennedy. FBI voiceprint analysts prove conclusively that that is your voice on that audiofeed offering increasing sums of money for both women. Do you still deny this?"

Kennedy said nothing.

"I'm going to assume that is a yes, which means, Mr. Kennedy, that you have perjured yourself with your earlier statement. Now onto another more egregious point. Mr. Kennedy, it is your assertion that it was Corporal Arlington's decision to steal your yacht in this 'chase me, find me' game that was apparently being 'played' with the two women escaping? And because it was her decision, when it failed her commanding officer Master Sergeant O'Hara chose to whip her to punish her for the indiscretion as part of the game?"

"Yes." Kennedy ground out through gritted teeth.

Abbie looked down at the digital recorder in front of her, clicked to another digital file, and turned it on. Now Clayton and the rest of the silent courtroom could hear panic in Cam's voice as she begged them first not to use the barbed wire whip, then Cam begging Shana to whip her with the leather whip because the barbed wire was too cruel. Shana's voice, shaking with anguish and misery, refused; then a strange whistling sound and a scream of horrific agony from Cam. Three times, as Shana broke and begged and pleaded to be allowed to whip Cam with the leather thong whip instead of the barbed wire, and Cam's screams growing less and less until finally she apparently passed out, followed by heartbreaking sobs from Shana.

"FBI voiceprint analysis proves it was definitely your voice, Master Sergeant O'Hara's, and Corporal Arlington's. And then, when we analyzed the contents of your computer, we found this." She pointed the remote at the viewscreen, but instead of a static picture suddenly the jury was seeing an actual video taken of an outdoor scene; Corporal Arlington sagged between two posts to which she was tied, with blood and strips of flesh hanging from her back as Shana crouched at Kennedy's feet, hands clasped in front of her in a pleading gesture. Her pleading words cut over the shocked murmurs from the jury. "Stop it, please, tell him to stop. You want me to whip her, I'll do it, okay, I'll do it, just please, please tell him to stop. I'll do it, I'll do whatever you want me to do, just make him stop, please, he'll kill her!"

Clayton's throat closed as a lump rose in it at the wild, anguished pleading in Shana's voice. He was startled out of his shock a moment later as Kennedy lunged half-out of his chair, and his eyes were alive with malice as he almost screamed at Abbie, "Those were from my work computer, anything at my company is private and confidential without a warrant, you bitch!"

Abbie didn't even blink. "Mr. Kennedy, we did not violate your company privacy. Let me explain something. The employees and the board of directors at your company were so sure that you were innocent of the charges that we didn't even need a warrant; they opened their computer systems to our forensic IT technicians. The techs did not access the portion of the server with client files, but they did find a signal that tied your personal computer into the company's network. By hijacking the signal we found videofeed from all the cameras all over the island with which you recorded many of your…activities…which were clearly illegal as we know that Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington were not there by choice. You used your own private computer to collect the video feed from the island, but apparently you also wanted this garbage to be available for your viewing pleasure at the office, so you co-opted your company's secure network for your own illegal activities."

"You BITCH!" Kennedy screamed, and in two fast steps he was off the witness stand and lunging for Abbie. "You BITCH, you RUINED it all…!"

Time seemed to slow; the courthouse bailiff was fat, out of shape, and too far across the room to do anything; Abbie felt terror close her throat as she saw him lunge for her, eyes wild; then, almost preternaturally fast, a blond blur from her right knocked into her, shoving her off her feet, sideways, and at the same time, a flash of titian red hair and a navy blue suit flashed before her eyes…

And then time snapped back into focus, and screams of shock from the jurors were choked off into deathly silence. Alex had reacted first, knocking Abbie out of Kennedy's way as the man lurched clumsily toward Abbie with arms outstretched; and the flash of red hair had been, of all people, Shana O'Hara, with her FBI-permitted gun drawn and pointed at Kennedy as she straddled his prone body on the floor.

No one moved. No one even dared to breathe. Shana's face was cold and hard and set, impassive and statue-smooth; her arms trembled, but even with that movement there was no way she would miss the frozen figure of Damien Kennedy lying on the floor in front of her. Not with her gun only an arm's length from his heart.

Clayton's tongue was sticking to the roof of his mouth; he had to lick his lips and clear his throat twice to get his voice working. "Stand down, Master Sergeant."

Beside Clayton, Snake Eyes had risen too, his face a mask of anguish and empathy, and Clayton knew what he was thinking, knew what each one of his soldiers were thinking. _No one is going to blame Shana if she shoots the bastard right here. No jury would convict her. Everyone would be positive she'd done the world a favor._ But if Shana killed a man in cold blood, it would sink in later, and she would never forgive herself, no matter how much she hated him, no matter how much he'd hurt her and Cam.

And then, in the silence, a soft voice. "Shana."

Cam.

She made her slow, halting way around the wooden bench back, stopped just inches before setting foot on the courtroom floor. "Shana. Let the cops take him. This isn't our way."

"He hurt me. He hurt you. He hurt you more than any single person in this room. How can you stick up for him?" Oh, the bitterness in Shana's voice. "He's a waste of air and space. I should put him out of his misery right now." And she thumbed back the safety on the gun.

"I'm not, Shana. But for our sakes and for those other women whose bodies he dumped off the fishing platform, he has to pay for what he's done. Killing him now won't be anything except an easy way out. You spent time with him. You know how he thinks. Don't let anger keep you from thinking this out. He's a cold-blooded planner, a thinker. He is counting on you to shoot him, to keep the trial from going forward, to keep any of his other nasty secrets from coming out. If you kill him now he gets what he wants; he wins. Don't let him win, Shana."

A shadow left Clayton's side and approached Shana. One step. Two. Three. And then Snake Eyes was reaching out with a hand, touching the gun, closing his fingers on it, and then it was in his hand and out of Shana's, and cops were closing in on Kennedy from all sides as Shana took two stumbling steps back, away from him, and looked up. And caught Cam even as the younger woman's legs gave under her, and the two women were hugging, crying, as they both crumpled bonelessly to the floor. "Thank you, thank you," Shana whispered into Cam's shoulder.

The judge rapped his gavel in the silence. "Court will adjourn for the day. We will reconvene tomorrow at nine AM. Bailiff, I want Mr. Kennedy in restraints—I will not have his shenanigans interrupting my court again, is that clear? Get him out of here."


	10. Chapter 10: Defense

**Chapter 10: Defense **

Clayton was slightly surprised when, as they got to the courthouse the next day, the security guard checking them in said that the trial had been moved to a different room. And when he entered the room with the rest of his unit, he saw why; Kennedy was now glowering at all of them from a cage of wire mesh, wearing a belly chain with wrist shackles over his immaculate suit. It looked wildly incongruous; the impeccably-dressed man in a cage where one expected to see a wild-eyed felon, but apparently the judge was not going to take any more chances; and after all, Damien's testimony was over. Today the defense would call their own witnesses, and maybe tomorrow, and then the jury would get the case to deliberate. And Clayton had absolutely no doubt that they'd find Damien Kennedy guilty of the charges.

Abbie had, reluctantly, informed them that after yesterday, Shana was not going to be allowed to carry a gun into the courtroom. "But why?" Cam demanded, bristling at the unfairness of it. "She didn't shoot him, and he lunged for you first! He provoked it, it was his fault! He might have gotten you if Shana hadn't stepped in with her gun and kept him from coming after you!"

Abbie sighed. "In a perfect world, I'd agree with you, but we live in an imperfect world and this is a very high-profile, emotionally charged trial. If it makes you feel any better, Agent Booth has also been requested not to wear his weapon, and he's agreed too—though not without the same protest you made, and the same argument. Your having the gun might have kept the conflict from escalating, but since Kennedy will be observing the rest of the trial from a seat which will allow for no disruptions, it's been decided to remove all weapons from the courtroom." And indeed, when Agent Seeley Booth entered the courtroom with Dr. Temperance Brennan his holster was empty and he looked distinctly uncomfortable, his hand never straying far from it.

The judge rapped his gavel to bring the court to order. "Court is now in session. Defense, please present your first witness—and keep in mind that after that display yesterday, my patience is extremely short and any uncontrolled displays from anyone in this courtroom will be dealt with harshly and immediately."

"So noted, Your Honor. As its first witness for the day, defense would like to call Adam Barefoot."

He'd heard that name before, where? Something to do with Cam…but even as Clayton racked his brain trying to remember where he'd heard the name, the defense said, "Please tell us a little about yourself and how you know one of the victims, Cameron Arlington."

Adam Barefoot! The man Jennifer Aiennatha had said broke Cam's heart and sent her running to the military! Clayton studied the man with renewed interest and narrowed eyes—so this guy was the reason Cam had left the reservation. Clayton couldn't find it in his heart to really hate the man—he did, after all, have him to thank for Cam ultimately landing on his base, in his unit—but the way he'd done it, his reasons for doing it, had been less than honorable. At the prosecution table, there was some brisk note-writing and note-passing going on between Charlie, Cam, Alex and Abbie. He knew that in a federal trial neither defense nor prosecution was required to give all the evidence to each other to prepare, but he couldn't possibly see what Adam Barefoot would have to say that would bolster the defense.

Until the man opened his mouth. "My name is Adam Barefoot, I am a member of Wolf Clan, Oneida tribe of the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Corporal Arlington—Cameron Arlington—was a former girlfriend. Well, she asked me to marry her, but I declined."

"Other than the fact that you obviously didn't love her enough to marry her, were there any other factors?"

"She's a wonderful girl, very pleasant to be around, charming, and capable. The problem was that…well, I couldn't satisfy her in bed. She'd been disfigured in a fire when she first arrived on the reservation, or so I'd heard since I came to live on the reservation after she'd already taken up residence. And she was single and sort of lonely so I did lots of things to help her out, just as anyone would have helped out a fellow neighbor. I helped her dig up ground for a little vegetable garden, helped her fix her roof one season when rains were heavy and she got a hole in it.

"But I'd been noticing that she started to single me out at village gatherings, dances, holidays. And then one day when I was over at her house she asked me up into the bedroom, and she undressed for me, and I saw how her body was scarred. I wasn't disgusted, I was more sorry for her than anything and I respected the fact that she was living with it and dealing with it. However, because of the fire her body was disfigured—we couldn't uh, have sex the normal way—and that was when she suggested several ways that I'd never heard of and that horrified me. Because she had nerve damage from the fire on her skin, she couldn't feel light sensations, and so she explained that I'd have to be 'hard' and 'rough'. I didn't know at the time about her past as a sex slave, but a lot of what she wanted has been close to what has been talked about here. And I…I couldn't deal with it, I couldn't do what she wanted to satisfy her in the bedroom, and I rejected her marriage offer. It was right after that that she joined the military."

Clayton was almost stiff with fury. That wasn't what Jennifer Aiennatha had said. Adam had called Cam a frigid half-woman, had made it clear that he didn't like her, had never even considered marrying her and had shamed her in front of her tribe. '_Just as anyone would have helped a fellow neighbor'. Sure, if you were in the white man's world, but when you lived with the Iroquois, performing tasks like that meant something entirely different culturally._

Abbie rose to her feet, looking at scribbled notes in her hand. "You are part Iroquois yourself, right? And you know Jennifer Aiennatha, the medicine woman of the village where you and corporal Arlington both lived, right? A medicine woman or man, next to the tribe's chieftain, are the two individuals responsible for informing newcomers of clan tradition and making sure those rules are upheld."

Defense rose to his feet. "Is there a question in there somewhere, Your Honor?"

"Withdrawn." Abbie raised a hand, thought for a moment, reframing her question. "When you arrived at the village did you meet the chief and the medicine woman, Jennifer Aiennatha?"

Adam Barefoot was already looking slightly uncomfortable. "Yes."

"And both of them are responsible for upholding tribal traditions, right?"

Now he was almost squirming. "Yes."

Abbie leaned forward. "So, Mr. Barefoot, you were aware that helping an unmarried woman of the Haudenosaunee—that's what the Iroquois call themselves—with things like fixing roofs and digging gardens is pretty much a sign to the woman that you are interested and available?"

"But I wasn't interested. And I wasn't raised as Iroquois so I didn't know."

"And yet Medicine Woman Aiennatha must have told you. Repeatedly."

A long silence, then Adam muttered, "If she did I didn't pay attention."

Abbie put down the papers. "You say that Cameron Arlington undressed for you and suggested several ways in which both of you could reach physical fulfillment without 'doing it' the 'normal way'. You used the words hard and rough. Did she come straight out and say that she wanted you to hurt her?"

Adam stared at her. She leaned forward again, dark eyes drilling into him. "Did she? And may I remind you that you are under oath and must respond truthfully?"

"I…uh…no, not exactly, but…"

Abbie sighed. "I don't want to be indelicate, or unnecessarily graphic, but Corporal Arlington's husband, Specialist Ironknife, indicates that Corporal Arlington had not experienced physical satisfaction prior to their honeymoon at Thanksgiving. Also, Specialist Ironknife informs me that he had a run-in with you during the time he and Corporal Arlington were on the reservation, and he says you told him she was deformed and ugly. Specialist Ironknife enforced Corporal Arlington's wish not to speak to you, and on his behalf Chief Andy Lightfeather permanently banished you from Seneca Tribe's Wolf Clan lands, and threatened to have you permanently exiled from the Six Nations reservation if you didn't stop forcing your presence on her. Isn't that true?"

Adam stared at the floor and mumbled something.

"No further questions."

The judge nodded to Adam. "You may step down, Mr. Barefoot." If a person could be said to have 'fled' the witness box, it would have been Adam; he was out of the courtroom in less time than it took Clayton to breathe twice.

"The defense now calls Siobhan O'Hara to the stand."

Shock froze Clayton to his seat as the door to the courtroom opened and a young woman walked in. Fair skin and red hair and similar features proclaimed to everyone who this had to be, but the disagreeable smirk and the cynical frown were expressions that rarely ever crossed Shana's face; where on this woman it was apparently such an institution that the lines created by those expressions were permanently etched on her face. Even her smile, as she seated herself, was disagreeable.

There was a slight rustle, and Clayton leaned forward to the bench in front of him. With all the prosecution witnesses done testifying, they'd been moved from the room next door to the front bench of the courtroom, in front of him, and he saw Shana grab Snake Eyes' sleeve and forcibly yank him back down on the seat when he'd half-stood. The scarred ninja master's eyes were fixed on Shana's sister, now being sworn in on the witness stand, with implacable anger; Shana was forcibly holding him down on one side, and Cam and Charlie had quickly and smoothly exchanged seats so that Charlie could restrain Snake Eyes on the other side. Now Clayton leaned forward and said quietly, "Stand down, Master Sergeant. That's an order. We will make no scenes in this courtroom."

Snake Eyes' shoulder blades touched the back of the bench, but his shoulders themselves remained tense and angry. Clayton couldn't blame him; out of all of them, Snake Eyes had the most anger toward Shana's sister. When Shana had taken a bullet to her head years ago, Siobhan had come to visit and tried to have Doc take Shana off life support. Snake Eyes had almost literally thrown Siobhan out of the room. Since Shana wasn't married to Snake Eyes, Siobhan's wishes should have been honored as she was Shana's family, but thankfully Doc had not listened, and Shana had made a near-miraculous recovery. The incident had left a deep impression on Snake Eyes, and Clayton wondered when Shana would tell her family she was engaged and would be getting married. After that little pronouncement, one side of the O'Hara family was never again going to talk to the other side, he suspected.

"Please state your name for us, if you please."

"Siobhan O'Hara, of the Atlanta O'Haras," Siobhan said as regally as if she'd announced she was the Queen of England. "Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara is my sister. Unfortunately."

Abbie shot to her feet. "Objection, Your Honor, she is the victim's own sister and family communications should be private!"

Defense held up a hand. "I will not be bringing up any conversations that Master Sergeant O'Hara may have had with her sister. I am merely going to point out the prior occasions in which Master Sergeant O'Hara is known to have met with Damien Kennedy, several occasions of which Ms. Siobhan O'Hara was privileged to witness."

"I'll allow it, but witness's testimony will be limited in scope only to meetings between the witness and the defendant. Proceed."

"The first time Mr. Kennedy and my sister met was on the occasion of her graduating law school and starting to practice law," Siobhan said, her disagreeable expression slightly less disagreeable at the moment; for those of the Joes who knew her, knew about her from listening to Shana gripe about her sister, it was evident that Siobhan was very much enjoying being the center of attention with all eyes on her. Not even Shana and Snake Eyes glowering at her from the front seats of the prosecution's gallery could dampen her obvious enjoyment of the spotlight, however temporary. "Shana was going to be joining a very prestigious law firm in Atlanta, one of the youngest lawyers they'd ever hired, and they threw a business mixer to introduce her to some of their clients so she could start making contacts in their client community."

_You mean her firm wanted to see her rubbing elbows with the 'right' people, and having a pretty vivacious red-head to charm the rich old men into hiring their firm just to see more of those long legs wouldn't have hurt either,_ Clayton thought grimly to himself. Although the way one looked was only supposed to be important to industries like acting and modeling, even in the business world if you had two candidates with the same qualifications but one was more attractive, the attractive one would get the business every time. And with Shana being touted as the bright future of the law firm, and being propped up and dusted off to serve as the public face of the company, had Shana stayed the firm would have been one of the richest and most successful in Atlanta.

_Thank goodness Shana never tolerated being used._ Clayton could well see her being bored out of her mind with law work, her intelligence and keen mind and athleticism wasted in a life of routine paperwork and rote memorization. And Snake Eyes would never have found the love of his life…and Shana likely wouldn't have either. Shana was wasted on law.

"The next time Shana met Damien, it was at the Governor's ball right after his inauguration in Atlanta. Shana was home on leave, and someone from her old law firm invited her to attend; she brought her boyfriend with her, as I remember, but he was too busy staring at my legs and flirting with me to pay much attention to her. I saw her several times talking to Mr. Kennedy." The smile Siobhan sent Kennedy's way was so simperingly sweet it would have made a cat sick. Clayton felt his blood sugar rise just seeing that saccharine smile.

And beside him, Duke stiffened in outrage, and Clayton grinned. Duke had been the one Shana took with her, but from what he'd heard from a mess-hall discussion between Duke and Shana earlier when she'd found out she had a picture taken at that Governor's ball, Duke hadn't spent the evening flirting with Siobhan, he'd spent the evening trying to either get away from her or get so toasted that he wouldn't even notice her.

"…so while she is my sister, and I do love her dearly, I simply cannot, in all fairness, consider her as completely blameless in all of this. She's brought different men to meet the family on leaves and holidays, and her current interest, her fellow Master Sergeant, has taken her off to wherever private hideaway they have, and it's no secret that she's attended practically every formal function that we, as the Atlanta O'Haras, have an obligation to attend whenever she's on leave. She is most definitely looking for a husband and I have no doubt that Mr. Kennedy has become the target of her machinations even though he has made it clear he is not interested in her."

"Objection! Speculation!" Abbie protested.

"Sustained. Keep it only to factual items, Ms. O'Hara."

"No further questions."

Abbie rose to her feet. "Ms. O'Hara. You knew nothing about this case until a week ago, when Master Sergeant O'Hara contacted you after finding and old photograph with a man she recognized as the defendant but could not personally remember ever having met. At that time you didn't know your sister was involved with the case. What made you decide to come here to testify on behalf of the defense?"

"I have known Mr. Kennedy personally for a while and while I love my sister, I simply couldn't stand by and watch her ruin his life with her vindictiveness. She's always wanted to be the center of attention, since she and I were both young; she excelled in everything she tried so as to be the center of attention, and had terrible temper tantrums when she wasn't. Her engagement to her current boyfriend—which we just learned about—is most likely just for show, just for the court, because _she_ hasn't told any of _us_ about it." A petulant whine. "So she's just engaged for the trial and after it's over she's going to go on with her attempts to be the attention-seeking vixen she is."

"If what Master Sergeant O'Hara seeks is attention, then why would she have chosen the Army? Right now she is a valued and irreplaceable member of her unit, but in the beginning she would have been just another grunt, just another soldier. She was the center of attention at her law firm, being invited to board meetings and client dinners before she'd even progressed to the level where she had her own office. Her law firm was using her as their public face, their spokesperson. She was getting plenty of media attention then, plenty of invitations to society functions, and getting paid more than as a junior lawyer than she is getting even now as a decorated Master Sergeant in the US Army. If what she truly sought was attention, she could have stayed at the law firm, garnered plenty of it and pay commensurate with the exposure, and never endured the hardships and privations of a soldier."

The defense lawyer opened his mouth, presumably to protest at the lack of a question, but Abbie held up a hand. "Withdrawn. No further questions."

The judge sighed. "Let's recess for lunch. Court is adjourned until this afternoon." And as soon as he said that, Shana was out of the bench she sat in and heading for the courtroom doors through which Siobhan had disappeared.


	11. Chapter 11: Verdict

**Chapter 11: Verdict**

"How could you do that?" Shana caught up with her sister in the hallway, eyes snapping green sparks, her cheeks flushed with anger. "How could you do this, Siobhan?"

"Oh Shana." Siobhan turned to face her younger sister, cool and composed and condescending; Clayton saw Snake Eyes make a quick, abortive move toward the other woman; just as quickly, he saw Charlie and Cam move in to stop him. Snake Eyes might have fought Charlie's hands off and gone after Siobhan anyway, but fighting off Cam's gentle grip could hurt her, and even in his anger he recognized that, and didn't fight her. She, understanding that, kept a firm grip on his sleeve.

"It's always about you, Shana," and there was anger and a lurking nastiness in the back of Siobhan's eyes, a sort of spiteful delight that she'd managed to get her sister to lose her temper. "You wanted attention, you want to go after Kennedy. What about me? My law practice is struggling right now, and I needed to make some money."

"You're getting _paid_ to appear here and say what you just said in there?" Shana's voice rose incredulously. "Do you have any idea what you've just done, you bitch?"

"I'm not getting paid to come here," Siobhan sneered. 'There you go, thinking the worst of me again, all because of your own self-centeredness. No, I came to talk because it's free publicity, it's a chance to get my name out there, a chance to make O'Hara a household name in Atlanta."

"And was that appearance in front of a TV camera free publicity too, or did the TV news crew pay you for that information? I swore you to secrecy, Siobhan, I trusted you to keep it a secret!"

"And you think I care what you want? It's always been about you. You wanted Dad and Mom's attention, you wanted our brothers' attention. You want to hog the spotlight all the time, and now with this, you got it. I have no doubt that Kennedy's a human trafficker, but whatever you said about him, and what he said about you, is your business. I have nothing to do with it, although I rather suspect that in your case, it's all just for show just like that engagement ring you wear." She sneered elegantly at Snake Eyes.

Snake Eyes almost broke away from Charlie and Cam at that one; Clayton's hand on his arm was the only thing that prevented him that time, as Siobhan continued. "You've been going out with that scarred-faced scarecrow—" Clayton put both hands on Snake Eyes' sleeve; on the other side, Duke stepped up to Snake Eyes' other side and grabbed that arm from Cam, "—for ten years, now he finally puts a ring on your finger? And you didn't call us to tell us about it, so what else can we suppose but that this is just a sham to put paid to the defense's assertion that you did this just to trap Kennedy into marrying him for his money?" Siobhan crossed her arms. "And for the record, I've met him several times over the last five years or so, and he's never been anything but nice and polite and no, I don't believe he's guilty of everything you're accusing him of."

"This isn't about me, Siobhan," Shana said angrily. "This has never been about me, contrary to what you think. This has been about justice, for Cam, for the rest of the women whose bodies were dumped off the fishing platform on the north side of that island after being tortured, raped, and killed. Can't you find some shred of decency inside you to even try to understand that? It's not about me. It's never been all about me. And you are a conniving scheming little—"

Clayton had tensed to catch hold of Shana if she went after her sister, but fortunately a new voice cut through the increasing tension. "Siobhan, that's enough, stop baiting your sister. Shana, you know perfectly well I don't allow my children to use that language in my hearing."

The red-haired men striding up to the little group showed definite resemblance to Shana and Siobhan; three of them, one older and two younger. Shana's brothers and father, Clayton assumed, having met Shana's relatives briefly on a number of occasions over the years but not remembering them clearly. "Siobhan, get going. Your husband is waiting for you out on the front steps—and so, I believe is the press. We are going to have a long talk when we go home, however; your mother is going to be extremely displeased that you did this for money, and I am very disappointed in the fact that you've tried to hurt your little sister like this."

Siobhan opened her mouth to spit an angry retort, thought better of it, turned, and stomped off. And as she left, a great deal of the tension left the air—and the body of the man whom Clayton was holding back.

"Dad," Shana's eyes were suspiciously damp as she ran to her father and flung her arms around him. "Dad, I'm so sorry…"

"It's okay, baby girl," Shana's father said softly, his own eyes not quite dry as he hugged Shana back with equal fervency. "I know there are some things that you can't talk about, with your work and all, and I'll admit it caught all of us completely by surprise when we saw Siobhan on TV talking about the case we'd read so much in the papers but never realized the victim was you. Siobhan never told us you'd called, we found out when your mother checked the caller ID and found the number to your base. I'm sorry for what Siobhan just said and did, Shana."

Her brothers stepped in as Shana's Dad let her go, and she hugged them both. "You didn't tell us you were engaged!" her second brother, Brian, exclaimed as she let him go. "You didn't call and tell us! Mom's going to go crazy trying to plan the wedding!"

Shana looked at him with a mischievous smile, her eyes still bright with tears. "Any chance you could not tell her?" she grinned, but Sean shook his head.

"No, I'm afraid we'll have to tell your mother. She'll drive me crazy trying to make plans, and expect her to be emailing every other day about your plans for bridesmaids, colors, flowers, and all the other stuff women put such stock in for their weddings."

"I don't want a big showy wedding like Siobhan's, Dad, I want a simple quiet one. I don't need to tell the world Snake Eyes loves me, we already know that," Shana said as Mr. O'Hara stepped up and extended a hand to Snake Eyes, who was now completely relaxed and even smiling a little bit at Shana's panic at the thought of what her mother might want to do with her wedding.

"Congratulations. Shana's brought home a couple of guys over the years," and Mr. O'Hara nodded significantly at Duke, "But you're the only one I've ever seen her in love with. It's been a long time in coming—I wondered the second time I saw you why you didn't just offer to make her an honest woman right then and there, but better late than never, as the saying goes." He shook Snake Eyes' hand, ignoring Shana's bright pink flush. "Now mind, I taught her everything she knows, so if you make her unhappy, she gets to take you on first—and then you'll face me."

"Um, Dad," Shana started, no doubt intending to delicately hit to her father that there was no way her father would be able to take out Snake Eyes, but Snake Eyes himself just nodded solemnly and signed_, if I make her unhappy she will be the first one to get hold of me, but I'll be perfectly willing to let you have a go at whatever is left when she's done._ He thought a moment, then grinned. _If there's anything left when she's done._

Chuckles erupted throughout the group of Joes as Shana's father approached Cam, leaning on Charlie's arm. "I've heard what's been said so far, I got the gist of it. It's only because of you that I have my youngest daughter here. Your dedication, commitment, and determination to get Shana back is something I'll never forget, and I know that I have you to thank for saving her life. I owe you a debt I can never repay, particularly after seeing what saving her cost you, physically, mentally and emotionally. Words don't even come close to expressing how I feel, but…thank you."

"It's okay, Mr. O'Hara," Cam said, although there was a catch in her voice that showed she was touched by his words. "I didn't do anything she wouldn't have done for me if our roles had been reversed."

Mr. O'Hara looked thoughtful. "I don't know about that. Shana has a lot more to lose if she did what you did. Nevertheless, I owe you. Now, I'm given to understand that you don't have family, your father died and you never knew your mother. I'd be honored if you'd consider yourself part of my family."

Cam stared at him, mouth open.

"It's the least I can do to thank the person who saved my daughter's life."

Shana grinned. "Now before you say yes, Cam, remember, that family unfortunately includes Siobhan." There was a slight edge under her voice although she tried to keep her tone light; it was going to be a while before she forgave her sister for this betrayal.

"I—I'm the one that's honored. Really." Cam couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Right. Then that's settled. After all this is over I want Shana to bring you and your husband to Atlanta for a visit. Let us show you what real family's like." His smile was warm as he patted her shoulder gently, smiling at her shy nod, then he turned to Clayton. "General Abernathy."

Clayton held out his hand; Mr. O'Hara shook it. "It can't have been easy sending my daughter off into a dangerous situation, and even harder when you found out she was missing in the middle of the jungle. And then when Corporal Arlington came up with this desperate plan to try and find Shana and get her back, it must have been the hardest decision you ever made knowing that so much was riding on the success or failure of this mission. But you trusted your officers and gave the okay, and as a direct result of your decisions I have my daughter back."

"It could have very easily gone the other way," Clayton said. "The thought of how quickly, how easily, this could have gone wrong, and what would have happened if neither Shana nor Cam came back still keeps me awake at night. And I'm not talking about my career; I would accept Leavenworth. It's the thought of what they would have endured—what Shana was forced to endure—that keeps me up at night and will give me nightmares for years to come. But it was her dedication, her strength, her—both of theirs—stubborn refusal to give up that brought them through it this far. You've done an incredible job raising a strong daughter who became one of the best soldiers it has ever been my privilege to command, and I am proud to call myself her commander and her friend."

Shana was flushed a bright, even pink; Clayton didn't give praise lightly, and she knew him better than to think he would have said something he didn't mean just for her father's benefit. "Hey, I think court's about to reconvene," she said, just to change the subject. Her father and Clayton both turned to look at her at the same time, with identical looks that said they knew she was changing the subject, and Cam smothered a laugh behind her hand as they filed back into the courtroom.

The first defense witness of the afternoon was Rosa Capelletti, and Clayton fought down an irrational surge of anger. It was over, Cam and Shana were both safe, and Rosa was in jail and going to stay in jail until after the trial, and then be extradited to her native Italy to face capital murder charges. If Italy didn't put her to death for the assassinations and torture she'd committed as a Mafia don's hitman (or woman) she was certainly going to spend the rest of her life in jail, and that suited Clayton just fine.

But Rosa was a treasure trove of information; she wasn't trying to hide what she'd done, wasn't trying to shield Kennedy. She told a silent courtroom about her first meeting with Kennedy, when she'd been on the run after she got sloppy at the scene of a hit and left a few too many clues behind to her identity; hair, and she'd spit on the body. Not a clever thing to do in this day of DNA testing and typing, and the fact that her crimes had started long before DNA testing was commonplace meant she'd left a string of evidence that tied her to a dozen murders. So, on the run and desperate, she'd met up with Kennedy on an international flight (before he'd purchased his own private plane) and he'd offered her a position on his own private island.

Here, he'd tricked her; she'd never been one to engage in or consider human trafficking and slavery desirable things, and in fact was slightly put off by the fact that the women who Kennedy kept in his basement and brought out only for sessions of rough violent sex were slaves; but the darkness in Rosa's soul delighted in the 'torture chamber' that Kennedy had constructed, and eventually she came to be indifferent to the other uses for the slaves. Her interest was in bizarre and painful medical experiments, in being able to push the limits of medicine while causing as much pain as possible.

Her face lit up with sadistic glee as she told a silently appalled courtroom about various 'experiments' she'd performed over the years, from trying different things to erase a person's fingerprints, from burns and acid to subcutaneous injections and surgical skin grafting; putting a pregnant slave on a table tilted head-downward to see if a woman could still give birth without gravity helping (the slave had died, and so had the child; Rosa didn't even know the name of the woman, where she'd come from; the body was added to the boneyard under the fishing platform and in the back of the courtroom, Special Agent Seeley Booth was scribbling a note to have the FBI search the boneyard again for a child's skull.

She described how she'd experimented with different drugs to try and elicit different reactions; how she'd discovered an interest in pharmaceuticals like barbiturates, amphetamines. She described for a silently shocked courtroom what exotic cocktails she'd given Shana; Anafranil, Oxytocin, Pentothal, Ecstasy, various kinds and types of amphetamines, barbiturates, and human hormones. The judge finally stopped her as she was describing, in excruciating detail, what injecting the Oxytocin had done to Shana.

But Rosa didn't seem fazed; instead she launched into detail of what she'd done to Cam, first in skinning her leg for the tissue to culture for the skin grafts, then describing for them how she'd strapped Cam down, injected her with a paralyzing agent for her muscles, then another for her vocal cords, then stripped the scar tissue from her breast, attached a prosthetic nipple and stitched a patchwork quilt of skin squares over the breast until it looked like the other one except for the stitches.

"But she ruined it by not staying awake," Rosa pouted now, crossing her arms and frowning petulantly. "I wanted her awake for the whole thing—I could look into her eyes and see she was in so much pain, but she couldn't scream or fight me, and the power was intoxicating."

Then her face clouded and she fairly spit out the next part of the story; how she'd tried to force Cam to do for her what Cam had done for Shana. And how Cam had taken revenge, in the only way she could, for what Rosa had done to them both, by taking away something irreplaceable, something integral to Rosa as a woman. As disgusting as the whole thing was, and although Clayton's stomach lurched at the thought of just how messy and horrific that had to have been, he couldn't help but feel vindictively pleased that Rosa would spend the rest of her life—however long or short it might be—without an integral part of her. He'd been horrified, back in SERE training when he'd first seen the scarred expanse between Cam's legs, at just how this integral part of a woman's body was missing. But he couldn't bring himself to feel the tiniest bit sorry that she didn't, and all pity vanished when he heard Rosa say that when the Naval troopers and the FBI had apprehended them in the boathouse with Cam's limp, brutalized body, she'd been planning on letting the girl down, strapping her down to the table again, and burning Cam with an acetylene torch.

Abbie was clearly shaken, and had no questions; the defense called Hans Keil up, and again the courtroom was treated to a litany of abuses that only a very sick human mind could come up with to do to another human being. Raping Cam as she lay paralyzed and unable to fight, having just nearly died of anaphylaxis; his deliberate selection of the barbed wire whip as the one that would do the most damage until Shana agreed to hurt Cam, because the alternative would kill her; about some of the things Hans had done to some of the other victims, but his crowning achievement had been to crucify Shana; tying her down with ropes so that when he told the guards where to place the nails, she wouldn't jerk in pain and spoil the aim; about Kennedy raping her as she lay and screamed; and finally, to an absolutely silent courtroom, the bees; telling Kennedy how to pick one up in tweezers and hold it in such a way that the sensitive flesh that was Kennedy's target would get the full impact of the bee's sting; the sadistic joy as he watched her struggle for each breath on a camera linked to a monitor specifically placed to capture every moment of her crucifixion.

Keil finished around two, and although Clayton thought the judge might call for the court to adjourn, he didn't, and sent the jury off to deliberate. It didn't take them very long at all; not that Clayton could see how they could NOT find Kennedy guilty, given the video taken at his island and hidden on the servers in his own business, keeping facts and accounts and figures right next to the horrific videos of the tortures he'd inflicted on dozens of helpless women. As the jury was off deliberating, Shana, Snake Eyes, Charlie and Cam were sitting with Shana's family, talking in low voices; Clayton was irrationally pleased to see Cam smiling and laughing at Shana's father and her brothers' jokes; it had been so long since he'd seen anything like normal behavior from her that this was…wonderful. And he couldn't help but notice that Shana's father seemed to understand Cam's quiet strength and shy reserve and instead of bullying her into joining, he was coaxing her into conversation. And when the jury sent word that they were done deliberating, and the verdict was read, it was Shana's father who caught Cam as she passed out, overwhelmed, at one single word:

Guilty.


	12. Chapter 12: Victim Statements

**Chapter 12: Victim Statements**

With the trial over, sentencing began.

Shana and Cam were allowed to make victims' statements; Clayton, knowing that Cam hated the spotlight, was almost sure that she would decline, so it was with some surprise that she made her way up to the witness stand the next day. In deference to her weakness, she was allowed to sit as she made her statement; her voice was steady, though low as she struggled to say what she'd obviously thought long and hard about.

"I can't begin to describe for you what all of this has been like. There's no way you could understand. I could talk until my voice is gone, and you would sympathize, you'd try to empathize, but there's no way you could know what all of this was actually like until you walked a mile in my shoes. And Goddess help me, but I don't want you to. If understanding me means that you would have to experience what I went through, I would rather you remained in ignorance.

"I was fifteen when I first experienced human trafficking and slavery. It left a very deep impression on my mind and on my body, in the form of the burn scars from the fire. I healed physically, but not mentally. I thought I'd healed mentally, but I was just fooling myself; I didn't try to heal, I buried it deeply, so deeply that I thought I would never have to look at it again, and joined the military. I excelled at what I tried to do, found a military operating specialty in something that I not only liked but was good at, and sought extra training to hone those skills. And it was during the course of that training that I learned that my past was my greatest weakness, and some of those around me, my training partners and instructors and squadmates, sought to exploit that weakness.

"But when I was invited to join General Abernathy's unit, instead of exploiting my weaknesses, they tried to help me overcome them. They took care of old physical issues. And Shana, in particular, was instrumental in helping me heal emotionally. Although there were times when I wanted to hate her for it, she forced me to let go of the secrets I'd kept so long, secrets that hurt me to keep, and in teaching me to let go she also taught me that the secret to life, and love, was to open up. She scraped at my nerves until I was angry, then worked with me patiently on weapons drills until the anger changed to a tired acceptance. It was just as hard on her as it was on me; she'd be already tired from a day drilling and working with the members of the unit, and then she'd pick up a practice sword and drill with me until I was exhausted and able to listen to what she said. It can't have been easy—but she did it, and in the process she became the first female friend I'd ever had.

"When she went missing in the jungle and we found she'd been sold to slavers—I knew what she would endure, I knew what she would go through. And I fought with myself, because I knew the only way we would get her back was if someone went undercover to find her. And it had to be someone who already knew what slavery was like, someone who knew what to do, how to behave, how to react, because anyone who didn't react right would be spotted, noticed, and killed as an interloper, an impostor. The problem was that a part of me didn't want to do it. Goddess help me, I'm so sorry, Shana, but I didn't. I'd just gotten married, I love Charlie more than my own life, and I was sure that leaving him was going to kill me. But every day I waited, every day I fought with myself, was one more day when something terrible could happen to you, and I knew that if you never, ever came back I'd blame myself for the rest of my life.

"And so I finally told Charlie what I wanted to do. I expected he would try to stop me, and he did, but he also knew I wouldn't rest until I'd done it, and so when I went to General Abernathy and told him what I wanted to do, Charlie supported me. There were a lot of things that had to fall in place before I could go, and I spent every minute waiting for it all to come together so I could go while at the same time wishing that something would fail along the way and I wouldn't have to go.

"But it did and I eventually found myself alone in the slave market in Amsterdam. I'd spent so much time as a slave during my teen years that it didn't take much for me to remember how to act, to look, to behave. And yet the whole time I kept looking at the entrance I knew I could leave if I wanted to, but I also knew that if I did, I would never see my friend again.

"That moment when I finally saw her—everything snapped into focus again. I knew I had to get her out, knew that while she was focused on figuring out what they wanted from her so she could stay alive, the fact that I knew how to act and behave meant I had a slight edge. And the fact that they had to drug her, heavily, just to get her to a point where they could handle her without her killing them, also didn't help.

"I can't describe what I felt when I first saw Kennedy looking us over on the auction block. Hatred. Fear—yes, I was afraid, but not of him, I was afraid for Shana, for what I knew he could do to her. We had to stay together, and while I was relieved when he bought both of us, I also knew what he was capable of because I'd seen others who acted the same. I met too many men like Damien Kennedy while a captive of my aunt and Uncle.

"And so I determined to make myself a bigger target, to try to get them to focus on me instead of her. I tried to deal, tried to be brave and accept it and try to survive, but after the…the barbed wire whipping…I gave up. I knew General Abernathy had arranged to come get us at the end of two weeks, but I really believed I wasn't going to make it—I thought I was going to die, and my only hope was to hold death off long enough to make sure Shana was safe.

"I…can't describe how I felt when I opened my eyes and saw Charlie and Snake Eyes and everyone else there. Relief, I wanted to just let go right there, they found me, they'd find Shana, and I did not care if I lived past that moment. But the minute they touched me the pain got so bad I couldn't even pass out. It wasn't until I saw Stretcher inject a needle in my arm that everything finally went away.

"When I woke up…I was in so much pain I barely wanted to move. Charlie…Charlie was a saint." Her voice broke; there were tears streaming down her face now. "He held me when I cried with pain, he coaxed and bullied me into staying alive when all I wanted to do was give up. The tiniest movement of the bed caused agony, so he brought in a folding cot and opened it beside our bed and slept on that just so he could be near me if I woke and needed something. He fed me when I was too weak to pick up the lightest plastic spoon, held a cup for me to drink, told me stories while I ate so I wouldn't have to think how much each bite of food hurt my raw throat going down. I look worse now than I did before—the scars deform my body, warp my skin and joints, and I'm in constant pain and I'm so weak and tired—but he holds me, stays with me, loves me, even now when I have a hard time loving myself.

"I can't explain what this verdict means to me. I didn't want him found guilty for me; I wanted him found guilty of hurting Shana, of hurting Charlie, of hurting Snake Eyes, Shana's fiancé; I wanted him guilty of hurting those women whose bones I saw under the fishing platform, I wanted him guilty of hurting everyone who knows and loves Shana and I both, everyone who suffered with us gone." She finished softly, "You gave me that. Thank you."

There wasn't a dry eye in the jury box as Cam made her way down and was replaced by Shana. "Thank you," Shana said without preamble, direct and to-the-point, as usual. "I've been in the Army for almost twenty years now. I've been on a number of missions for different assignments, tours of duty, and I can honestly say that while I considered some of the things I've done as 'hard', prior to this I simply had no idea just what 'hard' was. This…never in my life had I ever imagined that in this day and age, people as 'civilized' as Damien Kennedy could still own slaves.

"I knew, intellectually. When Cameron Arlington first came to our base, and Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and I both found out that she suffered from acute undiagnosed PTSD due to her experiences growing up, I started working with her on it, talking her through her emotions and drilling her with weapons to get her to release the pent-up anger she'd been carrying since it happened. Seeing her flashbacks, her panicked nightmares, convinced me that she'd been through some horrible experiences, and a lot of what she told me made me want to shoot something, but it never struck me just how absolutely horrific this must have been on her until suddenly I, too, was a slave. And…I'm an adult. I know all about the 'birds and the bees.' She was…a child, an innocent, sheltered child, who thought only about dancing and dreamed of being a ballerina and dancing for the New York City ballet. The thought of her thus being exposed to the brutality of the world in the way that she did…I'm surprised she's become such a well-adjusted, intensely empathetic individual. With everything that she'd been through, it wouldn't have surprised me at all if she'd turned out like Rosa Capelletti.

"We endured the first few days at Kennedy's island before we tried escape. I was pumped full of drugs, with barbiturates and amphetamines and I wasn't really thinking clearly; it was Cam who got us out, who hid us and then got me through the first few days of withdrawal. I don't know how she did it, managed to keep us hidden from those who were looking for us, managed to keep me quiet in my delirium so I wouldn't betray us to searchers, and took care of our food and water needs. I can only imagine she didn't sleep at all those three days.

"And we were captured again, and she was punished, and it was brutal and horrifying and shocking. She went through so much…and that was when she told me about the tracer chip she was wearing that would lead our unit to us. She begged me not to give in, not to give up, because rescue was on the way; and all I saw was that she'd kept a secret from me; that I was her commanding officer and she had kept secrets from them that she should have told me, that I should have known, and I got very, very angry with her. I think that crushed her spirit, made her give up, and Cam, oh God, I am so sorry for being angry with you…I didn't realize until much later why you'd kept it from me, that you had valid reasons of your own to hide this from me and that in doing so, you saved both our lives.

"Cam made a very hard choice to enter an intolerable situation to find me and get me out. If she hadn't made that decision, come up with the plan; if our commanding officer General Abernathy hadn't okayed the mission, if Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett and First Sergeant Conrad Hauser hadn't agreed to the subterfuge that took them to the Amsterdam market, and if they had not somehow found the strength of will to walk away from Cam and leave her there—I know that can't have been easy, since Staff Sergeant Hart-Burnett was the one who helped me counsel Corporal Arlington through her PTSD and she knew as well as I what Cam endured at fifteen—if none of those pieces had been in place, I would not be here.

"And I would not be upright, talking to you now, if it wasn't for my fiancé, Snake Eyes. It was a lucky roll of the dice that brought us to the same unit, and found each other, and there has been no one in my life but him since we met. The time never seemed right to get married; it would have long-ranging ramifications to both our careers if we did…but this incident has shown both of us just how precious life is, and how short it can be—shorter for us than many, because of our profession and what we do, and Cam has had enough sense to marry the man she loves. I can do no better than to follow her example. This isn't for show, this wasn't just for the trial. He stayed with me through the worst of the withdrawal after I got back, he nursed me through shock and pain and everything else, and I have him to thank for my presence here. The only thing that could validate his efforts was if Kennedy could be convicted, and you have done that. I thank each and every one of you for finding him guilty, for sparing anyone else from having to go through the ordeal we've all endured. Thank you." And she left the witness stand.

The judge had to clear his throat several times before he got his voice working. "Thank you for those words, Master Sergeant O'Hara, Corporal Arlington. Now, the court would like to hear prosecution's recommendations on sentencing."

Abbie stood up from the table. "Your Honor, in light of the facts of this case, prosecution would like to recommend that Mr. Kennedy spend the rest of his life in federal prison. His desire to own and control and possess another human being would lead to his compulsive need to do this again if he were released, so we are asking for one life sentence for the murder of each of the women whose skeleton was found under Kennedy's fishing platform, and another life sentence for the kidnapping, torture, and attempted murder of Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington." Abbie took a deep breath. "Prosecution is also asking for restitution from Damien Kennedy in the amount of five million dollars for Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington."

The courtroom erupted in a susurrus of sound, voices low enough for comments not to be heard clearly. Clayton listened; surprise, mostly; but there were sounds of approval, though here and there he heard the sound of disapproval.

"Five million? For each, Ms Carmichael? Do you think that's excessive?"

Abbie shook her head vehemently. "Your honor, Mr. Kennedy owns properties in various countries all over the world. He has over ten million in one Swiss bank account alone. And after all, your Honor, he paid two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for both at the Amsterdam market. Both Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington are going to need money on the road to recovery; Master Sergeant O'Hara will be seeking extensive counseling, and Corporal Arlington is still so weak she can't participate in much physical activity and is currently on medical leave. Also, Medical Specialist Larivee and Base Doctor Ed Steen assure me that she will need extensive surgery to correct the scarring and return her body to normal movement. And you cannot forget, Your Honor, that with the severity of the injuries Corporal Arlington has sustained, the one constant in her life, her dancing, has been taken from her, possibly forever. If you'll permit me a small demonstration…" The judge nodded, interest piqued, and Abbie cued up a video.

Cam. Dancing. Not with the ballet shoes and leotard Clayton was familiar with, but in a white sundress, barefoot, in the middle of a grassy meadow. Not the carefully structured, disciplined moves of the ballet, but this was…spontaneous, wild, exuberant. Charlie must have taken it while they were at her reservation in Western New York, in an unguarded moment. She was grace personified, beautiful not in face, but in form and happiness. He felt a lump rise into his throat, felt his eyes sting; he'd never seen her that happy at base, and looking at her in this video Charlie had no doubt shot with his cellphone, contrasting it with the agonized, pain-wracked creature who had been rescued from the island—Abbie couldn't have picked a sharper contrast.

And when he looked at the jury's face, and then the judge's, he knew Abbie was going to win.

The judge's eyebrows knitted together. "As Mr. Kennedy will obviously not need his money and his properties where he's going, I see no harm in disposing of it in a manner that will best benefit those he wronged most."

"Your Honor—" a rustle from the back of the room, and the man who'd spoken to Clayton in the hallway, Marcus Bennett, rose to his feet. "Several of the properties listed belong to the company and are not Mr. Kennedy's personal property."

"Then those properties will not be included in the tally of Mr. Kennedy's disposable assets—"

"Just a moment, Your Honor. Because several of these properties are not Mr. Kennedy's, it is up to the company to dispose of them as we please. Therefore, we propose placing them in the hands of Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington. The vacation land in New York we therefore propose to give to Corporal Arlington, as we understand that it borders the Iroquois reservation, and the plantation in Georgia we propose to give to Master Sergeant O'Hara."

Both Cam and Shana gasped audibly; the jurors, however, were nodding and smiling approvingly. The judge rapped his gavel. "Then it is decided. The western New York property will henceforth be the property of Cameron Arlington, and the Georgia property shall henceforth be the property of Shana O'Hara. This court also awards then the sum of five million dollars each, to be paid out of his assets and the liquidation of Damien Kennedy's private island—

"Your Honor," Cam said softly, so quietly that Clayton thought for a moment the man was going to miss it; but the older man leaned forward with a kind smile. "I…could you not sell the island?"

The judge stared at her. "I would have thought after what you went through you would never want to see it again."

"I…I don't. I never want to see it again. But…it is a beautiful place, and I thought…maybe…the victims of human trafficking who were freed from the Amsterdam market might like it there once some of the rooms and the—some of the equipment—has been cleared out. The large lava chamber that we were held in…with some redecorating, it would make a lovely group therapy room, and the quiet and peace of the island would be good for the victims to help recover. I'm sure that you could find some international group willing to take the island and repurpose it as a halfway house for human trafficking victims."

The judge held up a warning hand. "But if the island is not sold, that will reduce the amount of restitution you receive," he told Cam.

"I don't care," Cam said. "I don't care about the money. I want what's right." Beside her, Shana nodded too.

"Then as you are all apparently in agreement, the sum of restitution for Master Sergeant O'Hara and Corporal Arlington is set at three million each, plus the two properties given to each of the women. Damien Kennedy, you are hereby sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Your assets are forfeit. This court is now adjourned."


	13. Chapter 13: Restitution

**Chapter 13: Restitution**

"I don't believe it." Shana was still looking dazed and shocked.

Marcus Bennett handed her the deed to the Georgia plantation. "This is from all of us," he indicated the cadre of six men behind him. "We're on the board of directors for Kennedy Financial. We'd already talked about restitution. When the FBI came to see us and told us what Damien was accused of, we were shocked. We didn't think there was truth in the allegations, and that was why we gave them carte blanche to go through our files. What they found was horrifying, shocking; we had no idea that this stuff was hidden on our servers, and when they actually let us look at what they found—" He grimaced, an expression of distaste. "At that point the decision was made to distance the company from him. His father, when he left the company to Kennedy in his will, made it clear that if it was mismanaged the board of directors would have the power to remove him and that's exactly what we've decided to do. We came here with the deeds to all the properties he owns and that we own jointly with him with the intention of surrendering it as liquidatable assets, but when we heard that you were from Georgia we knew this would be perfect for you. And the New York land—" he turned to Cam, sitting there quietly reading the deed to the nine acres. "This borders the Iroquois reservation on one side, and private land on the other. We heard that the person who owned that private land died in a fire years ago—"

Alex gasped as Cam's eyes widened, and she snatched the deed from her as she typed something rapidly into her computer. A moment later she had her answer; the vacation land Marcus Bennett had just given Cam the deed to bordered the reservation on one side and Leo Yu's land on the other. And both parcels put together was almost an eighth of the land currently belonging to the Six Nations of the Iroquois. "Isn't that an incredible coincidence."

Cam shook her head. "I'm happy with my little cottage in the village. I have friends there, and Charlie likes them, and they like him." She turned to Charlie. "Your parents wanted to move to Western New York, to be closer to us when we're on leave." She looked up at Abbie and Alex. "Can I give the land to Charlie's parents? The…foundation…to Yu's cabin is still intact, the water and electric hookups are all there, and having a nice little cabin up there all their own would help them feel like part of the tribe but still give them privacy."

"You can do whatever you like with it. It's yours now."

"Well…one more thing. Since I'm never going to be able to have children, according to tribal laws the land reverts to the tribe after Charlie and I are gone. Is there going to be a problem with that? Federally, I mean."

Abbie considered. "You'd probably have to talk to a property and contracts lawyer, Alex and I are criminal lawyers, but if you leave it in a will that the property goes to the tribe, I don't see why the federal government can't add it to the reservation lands. But you really need to talk to a property lawyer about that."

"I'll do that. But it looks like a good solution." Cam turned to Shana, still looking over the deed to the Georgia property. "So how does this look to you?"

Shana shook her head. "I still can't believe I own a whole plantation. Okay, it's not the whole plantation anymore, it's the main house in the middle of four acres of land."

"The company kept it as a sort of peaceful country retreat. The main house, as you call it, is now mostly rooms with a bath attached to each, and a large dining room. We brought executives and a few business partners there over the years to discuss business matters, or to seal a business partnership, and there is a small barn with a couple of horses, with riding trails throughout the four acres."

"Horses?" Shana stared at him. "What on earth would I do with horses?"

Snake Eyes' hands flashed. _Something else to ride besides me?_ he suggested helpfully, eyes glinting with mischief. Although only Cam and Alex knew sign language in the room well enough to know what he'd said, their explosion of laughter and Shana's bright flush brought grins from everyone else.

The grins turned into chuckles when Alex translated what Snake eyes said. Laughter broke out all around the table; Shana turned even redder. Snake Eyes' grin just got wider.

Shana's father grinned, but wagged a finger. "Take it easy on him, Shana, okay? He's a good man and he can't take care of you if you don't take care of him. You don't want a marriage like Siobhan's." Shana nodded soberly; no, she didn't want a marriage like that. Siobhan had married for money; her husband, one of Atlanta's nouveau riche, had married her because it would get him access to the inner circle of Atlanta's old money. There was no real love and affection in that marriage, only affectation and appearances. The old saying that money couldn't buy happiness was true, particularly in their case.

Her father grinned. "Well, you're now an independently wealthy woman. Won't Siobhan be annoyed when she finds out you now own a whole plantation? You'll have to come home at some point—soon—and we'll go out and take a look at it. Do you have some leave time coming up?"

_We do,_ Snake Eyes nodded emphatically. _I'll be talking to General Abernathy about it._

"And Charlie and I have to get properly married." Cam said. "We got married at my reservation over Thanksgiving, but Shana got mad that she wasn't told, and since tribal marriages aren't acknowledged by the government, we have to be properly married. It'll be a quiet ceremony at base, just us, and then after that we'll have a few weeks' leave."

"Before Yu's trial starts." Alex nodded. "I realize this is all a lot of stress, and Cam's still recovering, so I wanted to make sure there was some down time in between. Leo Yu," she explained for the benefit of Marcus Bennett, who looked mystified, "is the trafficker who originally subjected Cam to trafficking and slavery. We had to use his knowledge to get Cam inserted into the slave market in Amsterdam to find Shana, and in exchange he wanted federal immunity. He thought he was just going to face state charges for child porn, but he's currently looking at charges for everything I could think of to throw at him, and his client files turned up twenty-three people who paid money to him to abuse Cam at that western New York property. All of them are going to trial in about a month."

"Twenty-three? My God…" Marcus Bennett looked stunned as he stared at Cam. "I can't imagine…I don't know what to say—"

"Then don't say anything. Please." Cam said quietly, and he gathered himself and nodded silently.

"All right, then if we're done here, I want to shanghai Cam and Shana and take them over to Bellevue," Alex said as she gathered up her papers and shut her laptop down. "I've been attending group therapy sessions over there for victims of human trafficking and torture, after what happened in the Congo, and I think Shana and Cam would benefit from attending. If you're up to it, that is," she said, looking at both women.

"We can go, but not for long. It's been a long day." Shana said after a glance at Cam.

"Good. We'll take my Mustang; everyone else can go home in the Hummer." And that settled that.

The base was in an uproar over the conclusion of the trial, the verdict, and Charlie was instantly hustled off to the mess, where the video Courtney had shot that day of the last of the trial was being played for the benefit of those who hadn't been able to attend. Snake Eyes, however, headed to their quarters, intending to change and head for the dojo. As he was doing that, however, he heard a soft knock at the door, and opened it to see Allie.

"This came for you today. I kinda had a guess as to what was inside, so I wanted to make sure it got to you…and only you." She handed him a small padded envelope, and he ripped it open, knowing already what was inside.

Two black velvet boxes fell out into his hand, and as he opened them, the mellow gleam of blued Damascus steel winked back at him. The rings were every bit as beautiful as they had been back at the shop, but now they had the claddagh design etched in relief, on the steel. And on the inside of the band, an inscription in Gaelic.

"'You have my heart'," Allie read. "Oh, Snake Eyes, they are beautiful, Shana's absolutely going to love them!"

He loved them too. Putting the envelope and boxes down, he reached for the man's ring and slipped it on. It fit perfectly, the metal seeming to warm instantly, immediately comfortable. He stared at it, and suddenly he couldn't imagine ever taking it off. It was perfect, just like the woman who would wear the matching ring, like the woman who he'd chosen to spend the rest of his life with. It was with great reluctance that he drew off the band and slipped it back into its velvet box; he couldn't wait to wear his, and he couldn't wait to see Shana's on her finger.

"You do have some leave time coming up. And so does Shana. I know she wants to be here for Cam's wedding, but after that's over you both can take a month off to go and get married."

He sighed as his hands flashed. _There's only one problem with getting married. Shana's mother will want to plan it, and it's going to have to include Shana's sister. I don't know if I could stay in the same room with her for more than five minutes without strangling her, not after what she did this time, leaking information to the press even after Shana swore her to secrecy and then appearing in court to testify on the defense's behalf._

"You're not marrying her, you're marrying Shana. I'm sure for Shana's sake you could manage to restrain yourself from killing Siobhan."

_Barely._

Allie laughed. "Well, if you really doubt that you could keep yourself from killing Siobhan, you could always do what Cam and Charlie are doing; get married here. We are, after all, family, if not by blood then by choice. Shana's family will just have to accept her choice; they can't go back and unmake it."

_Get married? Here? Like Cam and Charlie?_ He had to admit the thought had merit. He'd heard the plans already; one of the chaplains from the Fort Wadsworth Chaplain's school just above them—the front for their classified base—would come and perform the ceremony in about a week. It would be a simple one, accompanied by a potluck 'reception'; the kitchens were going to be open to the Joes to cook whatever they wanted, or to buy dishes to bring, and it was generally going to be a 'day off' their work; this was the first marriage this base had ever had, the first two Joes who would ever get married to each other. And there was a certain appeal in having a double wedding; Shana and Cam were as close as sisters (closer, if you looked at Shana's relationship with Siobhan!) and being able to share their special day might have extra meaning.

But Shana's bonds with her family were equally strong, and he couldn't make that kind of decision for her. So he simply sighed and tucked the two little velvet boxes into the bottom drawer of his dresser and headed for the dojo.

The events of the day slowly caught up with him as he stretched and started his usual workout. Guilty. Kennedy had been found guilty of everything; the dead women in the water, the human trafficking and slavery, and most of all, guilty of what he'd done to Shana. And while that might have provided a certain sense of closure for Shana, it just left Snake Eyes angry. Kennedy was going to sit in a jail cell for the rest of his life, three square meals and all his healthcare needs taken care of, while Shana was going to have to go through some extensive counseling, dealing with nightmares and psychological trauma—like her panic attack at the sounds of bees—for a long time, perhaps even for the rest of her life. He would be there with her, for her, for the rest of her life, but he couldn't keep her mind from torturing her with nightmares, couldn't keep her from experiencing some of the same PTSD symptoms Cam had.

By the time Shana came back to base and found him in the dojo, he was dripping sweat and no closer to exorcising the demons in his mind. However, one look at her tear-streaked face told him she'd had a rough time in the therapy group, and when she threw her arms around him, he held her, ignoring sweat and everything else. She wasn't crying, not quite, but he sensed she was on the knife edge of tears.

They went back to their quarters, and he left her sitting on the bed, looking drained and exhausted as he stepped into the shower. When she joined him a short while later, he looked at her with surprise, but she just shook her head and leaned against him, and he knew that while shower usually meant foreplay for them, this time she simply wanted to be close to him, didn't want to be left alone. So they showered together, wet skin sliding against wet skin, nothing sexual, just two humans silently taking comfort in each others' company. It gave Snake Eyes an excuse to soap his hands and wash her, as gently and tenderly as he had the day he'd found her scrubbing her skin raw. She was basically all healed now, at least physically; scar tissue fully formed over her wounds. There were two patches of scar tissue over each shoulder blade, and the two deep indentations in her arms from the nails she'd been crucified with, but other than that her body looked the same way as it did when she'd left.

Internally, however, she was changed forever.

He finished with the soap and started to rinse the lather off her, running his hands over wet, smooth skin, and as he finished she rested her forehead against his chest and started to cry. He turned off the water then, and simply held her, skin-to-skin, letting the solidity of his body remind her that he was there for her, would always be there for her, and he wondered briefly whether he should let her have the ring, whether he should give it to her early; would it make her feel better, having a solid acknowledgment that he was here, and would be here, forever?

"I'm s-s-sorry," she choked, and at that stuttered apology he forgot everything except just being with her. He pulled the towel down, drying her off, then dried himself off quickly, and when they were both dressed in boxers and t-shirts (since she'd come back she'd seemed to favor wearing his boxers, which he didn't mind a bit) he lay down in bed with her and she cuddled up against him and cried for a long time.

Her crying finally subsided to gentle sniffles, but he stayed silent, an unspoken invitation for her to talk if she wanted to. And finally she did. "I could have killed him. That moment when he attacked Abbie in open court—I could have killed him, shot him dead and there isn't a jury in the world who would have convicted me. But…I just couldn't. Not even when he hurt me, hurt Cam, so badly, tortured us, tried to kill us…I just couldn't. And I don't understand why.

"We were sitting there in the group therapy class—Alex is a regular, she not only shares and participates, she hands out lawyers' contacts to those who might benefit from legal help because her network is extensive. And they'd heard about us and they accepted us immediately. Bu t they were talking about closure, and one of them said they didn't understand why I didn't shoot him, because if she'd been me she would have, and she wondered why I didn't. I'm trained to take down targets, I'm a soldier, and I couldn't take out one man..."

_You're not made that way, Shana. You've never been able to kill someone in cold blood. It's not in you. _

"If I couldn't this time…what happens on the next mission I go out on with the unit? Will I freeze up then? Am I going to be able to pull the trigger then?"

She was doubting herself, and even though he'd known this might happen eventually, it still hurt hearing her question herself. _You'll be fine_—he started to sign when there was a quiet but brisk tap at their door.

Doc stood there with a couple of pills. "Charlie called me, told me Cam came back from the therapy class exhausted and upset, and he wanted her to get some undisturbed sleep so I gave her a sedative. I thought maybe Shana would like one too."

Shana appeared next to Snake Eyes in the doorway, and in the stark, bright light of the hall Snake Eyes could see the lines on her face, the tightness of her muscles. She reached out silently, took the pills Doc handed her wordlessly, and swallowed them down dry, then retreated back into the darkness of their room. Doc just gave Snake Eyes a sympathetic smile and left.


	14. Chapter 14: Justice

**Chapter 14: Justice**

He tried, but he couldn't sleep. Long after Shana's regular, even breathing told him she was asleep—and unlikely to have nightmares thanks to the pills Doc had given her—he was still awake, staring into the darkness, thinking about her and what she'd said. He still hadn't forgotten his anger of earlier either, and the more he thought the angrier he got.

Finally, he slipped out of bed and headed for the dojo. Since this was where he and Shana preferred to gear up before a mission, getting dressed in their preferred 'uniform' and strapping on their weapons, he and Shana had started keeping their dark body armor here since the single closet in their shared quarters was not really large enough to keep both their things in it, and they hadn't yet had a chance to start paring down their personal belongings so that both their things would fit.

He slipped into the dojo silently, got dressed in his black body armor, then stopped by a small cabinet that usually held hand weapons, pulling out a small object from the tiny box in the back of it. He shoved it in his pocket, then left the dojo, heading down toward base storage. He was looking for a specific item, two actually, and he was a little surprised to see Duke also at the supply closet, rummaging for something. "Hey, Snake Eyes," Duke grinned. "What are you doing up?"

Since he couldn't tell Duke what he was doing, he made his answer as brief as possible. _Looking for something_. And in a box on the bottom shelf he found it; two nails, six inches long, thick, about the same size and type that had been used to crucify Shana, in a box of assorted material left over from building projects around base. He palmed them and a hammer and left without a word.

Duke stared for a long time at the box of nails, then at the door closing behind Snake Eyes departing back. He had a very good idea what Snake Eyes was thinking—why would he be looking for nails at this hour, and be dressed to be going out on a mission? After midnight, in black stealth armor, and more importantly, with something colder than death in his eyes.

But there were some things that you just knew, and Duke made a deliberate decision. Yeah, he was going to be spending an uncomfortable night, but if his guess was correct, an uncomfortable night would give justice for several people who badly needed it.

He knew where all the surveillance cameras were on base; who didn't? And he knew there was one camera in the hall outside the hallway entrance to the dojo, but there wasn't a camera in the gym that would pick up the gym entrance to the dojo. He slipped into the gym, casually nodded to Stalker , who was working out on the weights, and entered the dojo from the gym entrance. Once inside, he found the closet where Snake Eyes and Shana kept their stealth suits, and pulled out Snake Eyes' spare.

He and Snake Eyes were the same height and weight, but Snake Eyes had a slim, wiry build, where Duke was more muscular and had more mass. Since the suits were specifically tailored for both Snake Eyes and Shana, it was something of a tight fit for Duke, but not once did he consider stopping. If he'd read Snake Eyes right, what he was doing could well save both Snake and Shana.

He exited the dojo by the gym door, and ducked all the cameras as he headed outside, then once outside he turned and sauntered in, in full view of the camera. To anyone who might be watching, it would look like Snake Eyes went for a run and came back. Duke then did his level best to imitate Snake Eyes' walk as he headed for the mess hall, taking care to be well in view of the various cameras he passed on the way. Once in the mess hall, he fixed himself a cup of tea from the single-serve machine at one side of the mess hall, which Snake Eyes was known to do on nights when he couldn't sleep. Although Duke rarely ever drank tea, and when he did it was usually overloaded with sugar, this time he forced himself to drink it without sugar or milk or honey, which Snake Eyes was famous for. _I hope you appreciate what I'm doing for you, my friend_, he thought as he forced himself not to make a face at the strong black tea. Then he got up and headed down the hall, to the dojo, where he entered in full view of the cameras from the hall door. Once he'd done that, he settled down to wait.

Three hours later he exited the dojo, still dressed in Snake Eyes' stealth suit, then went down the hall toward the exit, following the same route Snake Eyes had taken. Once outside, he broke into a jog as he turned right toward the lighthouse. As soon as he was out of range of the exterior cameras, he stripped off the stealth suit and then sneaked past them to get back into base. Once there he padded quietly through corridors until he got back to the gym, ducked into the dojo, tucked the stealth suit back into the closet, then sauntered out into the gym. Stalker was gone, and there was no one to see him as he took a bottle of water from the small refrigerator and unscrewed the cap, then liberally dribbled 'sweat' down the back and the front of his gray Army t-shirt, then soaked his hair with it too. He left the gym sauntering casually, sipping from the bottle, pretending to breathe hard—as someone would who'd just spent a significant amount of time in the gym.

He didn't have to see video to know what someone would have seen if they were looking; Snake Eyes, leaving the base; and then they would see 'Snake Eyes' coming back; only, it would be Duke dressed in Snake Eyes' stealth suit. They would see 'Snake Eyes' go to the mess hall for a cup of tea, see him go to the dojo for three hours, then go back out for a run.

Duke only hoped that those three hours had been long enough for Snake Eyes to do…whatever.

Prisons were built to keep people in. They weren't built to keep people out. And when the person breaking into a prison was a stealth-trained, black ops Army ninja, the obstacles meant to segregate prisoners from the outside world weren't obstacles at all. They were merely…challenges.

Which said Army ninja navigated with ease.

The searchlights that scanned the grounds moved in predictable, pre-programmed patterns; within two minutes of looking at them he knew the best time to make a run between them, and he arrived at the prison wall not even out of breath. Getting over the razor wire at the top of the fence was a cakewalk for a ninja with a black armored suit; when he and Shana had designed these (with Courtney's help) they'd taken into account the kinds of obstacles that they might have to go over, and in fact had taken a quick trip out to Camp Mackall once the prototypes were developed to test their flexibility and durability on the Nasty Nick—Camp Mackall's obstacle course, one of the hardest in the Army and the one used for SERE training. It had proved fully workable, and the design had been picked up for possible development by the army as Special Ops suits (Shana and Snake Eyes were 'testing' the 'prototypes', as the late General Clancy had explained.) But the suit fully proved its functionality now as he got over two walls topped by barbed wire, used a roof ladder to get to the roof, and slipped into an access door once on top of the building.

Now the problem was to figure out where Kennedy was being held. Seeing as how he was now awaiting transfer to a long-term federal penitentiary, he wouldn't be in with the general population; most likely a maximum-security holding with little or no contact. So. Segregation? He decided to check there first.

It wasn't hard to spot where all the prison security cameras were; having been the one to set up clandestine monitoring cameras himself on many missions, if you knew where you would likely put them, then you knew where others put them and you could avoid them easily. And his guess was confirmed when he looked into the third solitary confinement cell and found Kennedy, stretched out on the bed in his cell and sleeping soundly.

At the sight of the man all the deadly rage Snake Eyes had been keeping leashed surfaced. How could anyone sleep soundly after having done what this man did to Shana and Cam? He made short work of the lock on the outside of the door and stepped in. He couldn't lock it after himself, but that didn't matter; Kennedy was not going to leave this cell alive. Whether he died trying to get past Snake Eyes or died at Snake Eyes' hand, it didn't matter; he wasn't leaving this cell alive. He'd been guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

No one said how long that life was going to be.

He crossed the cell with two quick steps, pulling out a stiletto as he went. Before Kennedy was even halfway awake the stiletto had plunged into his throat, and Snake Eyes gave the knife a quick twist.

Kennedy awoke screaming. Soundlessly.

Snake Eyes had become intimately familiar with how the vocal cords and larynx in the human throat worked while he was trying to regain his own after he and Shana had both survived the helicopter crash. The thrust with the stiletto hadn't been meant to cut Kennedy's throat, wasn't meant to bleed him out—the angle he'd stabbed the thin-bladed knife in didn't hit any major blood vessels. Yes, he wanted the man to die, but he would die on Snake Eyes' schedule, not his own.

He stared at Snake Eyes with wide, terrified eyes; Snake Eyes imagined Shana must have looked at Kennedy himself with that look in her eyes at some point during her captivity; fear, pleading, a desperate request not to die. Snake Eyes ignored it now, as Kennedy had ignored it then—this man didn't deserve pity or mercy.

He backed up as Kennedy sat up, hands over his throat. There was blood, but not much; less than there would have been with even a bloody nose. But Snake Eyes could read lips, and had no trouble fingering out what Kennedy wanted to say. Not that anything he said would change Snake Eyes' mind the tiniest bit.

:You're the soldier that Testarossa is getting married to.:

Snake Eyes took the stiletto, grabbed Kennedy's arm, and pushed the point into the nerve just behind the elbow. Kennedy screamed soundlessly as Snake Eyes signed with the other hand. _Her name is Shana. Yes, we are getting married, and before we do that I will make sure that your ghost won't haunt her for the rest of her life. Your life will end tonight. Nothing you can say or do will change that, you have been found guilty, sentenced to life in prison, and I doubt they will look very hard for the person who killed you. And even if they find me, I have no problems going to Leavenworth for killing you. Not after what you did._

:You can't kill me. She had a gun in her hands and she couldn't.:

_I am not Shana. She has more compassion than any soldier I know. She is a soldier, and a good one, and has killed when necessary, but she has regretted every single life she's ever had to take. I have regrets too, but none of them will be for you._ He grabbed the front of Kennedy's jumpsuit and hauled him off the cot, dropping him to the floor.

Kennedy tried to crawl away from him.

Snake Eyes grabbed the back of the prison jumpsuit, yanked his back down to the floor, and placed his knee against the man's neck, effectively pinning Kennedy to the floor. He'd brought a small hammer with him, and it was a matter of a few minutes to extend the right arm, stepping on the hand with his other foot and ignoring the silent yelp of pain from crushed fingers—it wasn't like Kennedy was ever going to need to use those fingers again, after all—and placed the point of the nail against the inside of the man's forearm and hammered the nail through the limb, driving the point into the floor with the strength of the blows. He wasn't as careful with Kennedy as Kennedy had been with Shana—blood spurted, but that hardly mattered, because Snake Eyes wasn't trying to keep him alive. He wanted the man to bleed out. The concrete floor resisted the nail point, but Snake Eyes' anger overcame that easily; the strength behind the hammer hitting the nail was fueled by cold fury and the concrete didn't stand a chance. Snake Eyes did the second arm the same way, and once Kennedy's arms were pinned, like a bug to a specimen mounting board, he sat on the man's legs, pinning him down, keeping him from flailing, then took out the item he'd taken from the hand-weapons cabinet at base.

Shana's old dog tags.

He held them in front of Kennedy. _Let this be the last thing you see in this world. Remember what you did that brought this retribution on you. Remember the woman whose life you nearly ruined, who will have nightmares for the rest of her life because of what you did, who carries scars now laid on her by your hand. Remember that—and give my regards to the Devil when you meet him, because you are going to hell. I'm certain of it._

And he held the tags before Kennedy's face until the light in the man's eyes went out.

"What's going on?" Shana blinked as she saw Allie hurrying toward her and Snake Eyes as they strolled down the hallway toward mess the next morning.

"General Hawk needs you in the small briefing room by his office right away. I also need to bring Cam and Charlie." Allie was off like a shot, running toward the mess.

"I wonder what happened," Shana said as she broke into a speedwalk toward Hawk's office. "Come on!"

Snake Eyes knew what it was about. The wardens had gone to Kennedy's cell, found him dead, nailed to the floor, and they must have figured out who'd done it. But as he looked down inside himself for remorse, he couldn't find any. No pity, no guilt, no remorse. His job was to protect and care for Shana, and he'd done what he did to care for her in the only way open to him. If that meant he went to jail, so be it. He hadn't been kidding when he told Kennedy he'd accept Leavenworth. For Shana it was worth it.

And as he'd predicted, there were two FBI agents here, and Hawk was directing Mainframe and Hacker to set up a monitor and bring last night's security camera recordings. "Damien Kennedy was killed last night in his cell at Riker's," Hawk said without preamble, his face grim. "I told the FBI that we were all here last night, but they insist that someone must have sneaked off base. Kennedy died around two last night, so we're checking everyone's whereabouts." Out the corner of his eye, Snake Eyes saw Duke relax—he and Flint were both here, as Hawk's second and third in command—and Snake Eyes wondered about that.

Allie entered just then with Charlie and Cam; Cam dropped into a chair, breathing hard with exertion, and Charlie remained standing beside her. The FBI Agent looked at her with a flash of pity in his eyes, but started right in. "Damien Kennedy was killed in his cell last night at Riker's," he said. "And we suspect someone in this room did it. Now, we're pretty sure it's not Major General Abernathy, and we're sure it's not Corporal Arlington—her physical condition is too fragile. We're also sure it's not Master Sergeant O'Hara, if she wanted him dead she would have shot him back there in the courtroom. Also, the amount of strength required to drive six inch nails through a human limb and into a concrete floor could only have come from a male. So that leaves Master Sergeant…Snake Eyes…and Specialist Ironknife." He leveled his gaze at Charlie. "And we all heard you say that if Kennedy touched your wife again, you would kill him. And you have the strength and mass to crucify him on the floor."

Snake Eyes felt a flash of guilt. Of all the possible scenarios, having Charlie blamed for what he'd done was one he hadn't considered. Dear God, if the FBI decided to arrest Charlie, it would kill Cam…she depended on him right now for practically everything. Even Hawk had given Charlie leave to spend time with Cam and take care of her, understanding his role of nurse. And he made a quick choice; if they decided to arrest Charlie for the murder, he would confess and go to jail himself. Shana would be furious, but she was stronger than Cam; she'd survive. But without Charlie, Cam would die; no one else could care for her in the condition she was in now the way Charlie could.

"I spent the night with Cam. After trial wrapped up yesterday Private Cabot took Cam and Shana to Bellevue to a therapy session for victims of torture, and Cam came back very upset. Doc gave her a sedative to help her sleep, and I know he gave one to Shana too, since our rooms are right next to each other. I stayed with Cam—I have to. She wakes up screaming from nightmares, disoriented and in panic sometimes, and if I'm not there to calm her down she could hurt herself. I never leave her side when she's asleep. You can check the security cameras—there's one in the hallway outside her door."

And the time-stamped camera showed the truth; Doc knocked on the door with a bottle of pills, Charlie opened the door, invited Doc in, ushered him out moments later, then closed the door and it didn't open again.

"And Snake Eyes?" but since the camera caught Shana and Snake Eyes' door too, he could see Doc knocking, Snake Eyes opening, and Shana taking the pills, swallowing them in full view of the camera, and going back inside. For a couple of hours the door stayed closed, then it opened and Snake Eyes walked out. The cameras tracked his progress through base to the dojo, then out again in his stealth armor, then to base storage, and then out by the motorpool exit.

And then to Snake Eyes' astonishment, half an hour later a black-stealth-suited figure walked back in the motorpool door. That figure headed for the mess hall, fixed and drank a cup of tea, went to the dojo for three hours, then came out and went back outside. And then Snake Eyes himself came in half an hour later.

"Well, that settles it. It can't be any of you. Kennedy was killed around two in the morning, just when Master Sergeant Snake Eyes was drinking tea in the mess hall. And Specialist Ironknife never left his room at all."

As the FBI agents started reviewing their suspect list, Snake Eyes locked gazes with Duke. He knew who had put on his stealth suit the previous night and given him an alibi. Duke winked once, inclined his head toward Shana.

Snake Eyes smiled and returned his attention to the conversation. They didn't speak; they didn't need to. Some things just went deeper than words.


	15. Chapter 15: Wedding

**Chapter 15: Wedding**

"It's going to be a beautiful day!"

Shana bounced enthusiastically on the end of the bed while Snake Eyes grinned indulgently at her. She looked like she had before the incident; glowing with health, gaining back the body fat she'd had and was now slowly turning it back into muscle. He was still taking it easy on her in workouts, but less than he had formerly and she was now pushing herself a little more than before.

But today they were going to forget they were soldiers and just be human beings. It was something of a holiday, this first Joe wedding, and aside from some skeleton crew (who were going to rotate so everyone could get a bit of the fun) they were all off-duty.

Over the last week the base had developed mysterious stashes of beer. Not much, because everyone knew how Hawk felt about drunk and disorderly conduct, and anyone who drank enough to do something stupid had been warned they would find themselves cleaning bathrooms for a week. There would be a few new recruits who would break that rule, but that was okay; they'd find out the hard way that Hawk wasn't bluffing, and the toilets would get a scrubbing they didn't get often.

The day was perfect; the weather reports said it was going to be a fine spring morning, for St Paddy's Day; while March could sometimes be rainy and unpredictable, all the weather reports said today was going to be a beautiful, warm spring day with just a hint of breeze. The guys had been told to wear whatever they felt comfortable in; whether they wanted to wear their dress uniforms or Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, it didn't matter to Charlie, who was going to wear traditional Navajo garments.

But since the heavy leather garments chafed Cam's still-healing skin, a dress wouldn't be quite as bad. In the week since the trial had wrapped and Kennedy had died, she'd made remarkable strides in her recovery; enough that she could now walk a mile around the base, and was concentrating on doing it in a time limit, adjusting that time limit shorter and shorter to push her endurance. Shana and Doc were also structuring light physical exercises designed to carefully stretch the scar tissue to give her more joint mobility and make the uneven tilt of her shoulders much less noticeable, and it seemed to be working; she was able to carry her own tray in the mess hall, and in between Charlie had been busy bringing in burgers and hot dogs and all sorts of carryout items from various takeout places all over New York to tempt her appetite. She was filling out, looking healthier, her face and body weren't as thin, and she had regained some of the sparkle in her eyes and happiness in her face.

It seemed The Girls had decided they wanted to dress for Their Guys. Snake Eyes had decided to wear his class B's for the occasion—it was simpler, not to have to go through the horrific chore of actually shopping for something to wear, but Shana was bouncing around in a satiny white slip that pushed her breasts up to an almost distracting degree, and Snake Eyes was having a hard time thinking of anything but what lay under that white slip, and when she stopped in front of him to help button his jacket, it took all of his self-control not to grab her, strip off that slip, and make love to her. What kept him from following through on the impulse was the knowledge that in the past weeks since they'd resumed lovemaking, she'd seemed to want to be the one on top, controlling the action. Which was fine, he understood that being out of control had given her some issues and if he had to be on the bottom for a while, well…watching the underside of her breasts bouncing while she rode him was a sight he'd never get tired of seeing.

So when Allie and Courtney and Cam walked into his and Shana's quarters carrying clothes hangers with dresses shrouded in long white clothing bags, he was only too happy to make his escape. The feminine giggles that followed him out of the room told him that his discomfort (the fact that his pants felt a few sizes too tight) had been noticed, but among those giggles had been Shana's and he really didn't mind her laughing at him. It was wonderful just to hear her laugh.

They'd decided to have the wedding in the shadow of the old Verrazano Narrows lighthouse, on the edge of the grounds of the chaplains' school. There was a small open-air park, with an arched patio/gazebo that would be perfect for the occasion, and they brought blankets instead of having to bring chairs up through the motorpool (whose entrance wasn't that far from the gazebo, so if anyone wanted to slip away and find a nice convenient Hummer backseat (Courtney!) they could do so). Snake Eyes wasn't discounting the option of doing that himself at some point in the afternoon, though it wouldn't be the backseat of one of the Joe vehicles he'd be choosing to do it in!

He met Charlie leaving the room he shared with Cam, dressed in his Native American leathers. They both headed in companionable silence down the halls toward the motorpool, and only when they were about halfway there did Charlie say, "I would have gone, my friend."

Snake Eyes looked at him in surprise.

"I would have gone to jail for you. I know you did it. I don't know how, and I don't want to know how, but I would have gone to jail for you. It would have been worth it to see the bastard dead."

Snake Eyes nodded his understanding. In the week since the trial wrapped and Kennedy had died, the media had run wild with rumors. As the FBI had proved conclusively that it had not been Snake Eyes or Charlie who had killed Kennedy, newspapers had run the gamut from another prisoner to a guard who despised what Kennedy had done, to a government cover up. But the prison had seemed disinclined to actively investigate, hadn't even confiscated the base's security camera footage, though this was something Clayton had been bracing for and had made plans to try and prevent. Although he hadn't said anything—and likely wouldn't—Shana, Snake Eyes, Cam and Charlie all knew he knew who had killed Kennedy, and was prepared to take a stand on the side of justice rather than allow one of his soldiers to go to prison for this. Although the law said it was wrong, his heart had said it was right, and in this case it seemed that the law agreed with him because the official story put out four days after Kennedy's death said that another prisoner at Riker's had killed him.

_Cam needs you._ Snake Eyes wouldn't confirm Charlie's guess that he'd killed Kennedy; better that the big Native American not know. If another inquiry was started later, Charlie would not be lying when he said he didn't know.

"Cam's been sleeping better since he died. She won't say it, but she's glad he's dead, and so am I. And, I believe, so is Shana."

Snake Eyes couldn't argue with that; he knew it was true. With their rooms adjacent, he and Shana knew when Cam woke with nightmares; Cam and Charlie knew when Shana woke with nightmares. It was inevitable. Snake Eyes could only wonder what Charlie and Cam thought about the sounds of pleasure that came from his and Shana's room. He knew Cam probably felt bad, that she wasn't healed enough to be a wife to Charlie, but Snake Eyes was equally sure that her lack of performing 'wifely duties' wasn't bothering Charlie one bit.

_Looking forward to getting married?_

"This is only a formality, my friend. We're already married, if not in the eyes of the law, then in the eyes of the People of the tribes we're in, and the eyes of the people who matter most to us—the people here."

He looked at Snake Eyes with a gleam of mischief in his eyes. "You are the one who should be looking forward to getting married. You and Shana have been committed to each other, and yet not committed, for a very long time. Cam was secretly hoping this would be a double wedding, that she could share this day with Shana, but she understands Shana would like to have this done with her real family so she hasn't pushed."

_You wouldn't mind? Cam wouldn't mind?_

Charlie simply shook his head; they'd reached the gazebo by this time, and people were already gathered; some sitting on the blankets on the grass and talking, some standing by the tables that held the food, nursing beers; and the chaplain was standing under the white-painted archway of the gazebo smiling and waiting for the bride and groom. Charlie approached the gazebo to tell the chaplain the girls were on their way when the crowd of Joes suddenly hushed. Charlie turned, Snake Eyes standing next to him.

Cam was wearing a lovely white (okay, Shana called it eggshell but Snake Eyes couldn't see the difference between eggshell and white) dress that covered her scars and somehow made the unequal shoulder tilt unnoticeable. She was beautiful, for the first time since Snake Eyes had known her…but then he looked past her and saw the red-haired goddess standing behind Cam and forgot everything else.

Shana looked radiant on a warm spring morning on St. Patrick's Day, half her hair caught in an elaborate web of Celtic braids, the other half spilling loose and free down her back. Her dress was simple, shamrock green satin hugging her torso and flaring out to a simple bell shape from her waist. Courtney's pale-blue dress was all ruffles and flounces, and Allie's was a simple rose-colored sheath, and although all the women looked beautiful, Snake Eyes could only see Shana.

Cam and Charlie had prepared vows; they all quieted to hear them. "Cameron Arlington. When I first saw you on a makeshift stretcher being carried by the other members of your SERE training class, I had no idea I was meeting the woman who would hold my heart for the rest of my life. We haven't known each other very long, but I knew I liked you after the first day we spent together, and after the end of the first week I knew you were the only woman I would ever love for the rest of my life. I was the happiest man on earth when you said you wanted to marry me, and marrying you is the best decision I've ever made. I don't need to promise you I'll be faithful, because you already know that; you know that I will love, cherish and protect you for the rest of your life, and I will never, ever hurt you deliberately or cause you pain, and if I can help it, no one else ever will either. This I swear by the Ancestors."

Cam spoke, her voice clear and steady. "I love you, Charlie Ironknife. I never, ever thought I'd find someone to share the rest of my life with, someone who loved me for who I was, who didn't mind the scars or the emotional baggage. When I first came here, everyone was so kind, especially you, and I kept wondering what you wanted from me that you were this nice. It didn't take me long to understand that you wanted me, wanted who I was rather than for anything you thought I could do for you. It's a rare quality, and it's one I was completely unfamiliar with. And even though in our hearts and in the eyes of our tribes, we are already married, I want to make this official and make it official to everyone that we are married, that I will never love anyone the way I love you."

Charlie slipped a simple thin gold band around her finger—the ring he'd already given her when they got married in front of the tribe several months ago but had decided to exchange again just for this ceremony. She, in turn, slipped his back on—and started to kiss before the chaplain even said "I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride."

Cheers, hoots and wolf whistles followed the end of this pronouncement, and the fervency of the kiss left no doubt in anyone's mind of their commitment…or their passion.

Snake Eyes found Shana nursing a bottle of Killian's and joking with Duke and Stalker; at the sight of him, however, she excused herself and came toward him. Her hips swayed enticingly in the lovely green dress as she strolled over the grass toward him, and for a moment he could almost imagine he was seeing an Irish goddess coming toward him. Then the moment passed, and she was something infinitely more precious than a goddess; she was Shana, his Shana, his goddess.

She planted a kiss that tasted faintly of alcohol on his lips and grinned. "It was a lovely ceremony. I'm glad we were here to watch it." They were scheduled to leave in two days for Shana's parents' in Atlanta, to look at the new property Shana now owned, and likely to endure her mother's endless suggestions on how their wedding should go. "And I hope, when we eventually get married, our wedding is as happy as this. I know my Mom will take the chance to turn it into a huge fancy production with half of Atlanta there to see us get married, but really, I'd be happier if the ceremony were like this—good friends, good beer, and a good day." She tossed back the last of the bottle she was holding. "In fact, if we hadn't been so wrapped up in the trial that I forgot to go look at wedding rings, I'd say we just have it here, now, with everyone who means the most to us. A big wedding at home would mean only a few of our real friends would be able to attend, and Mom and Siobhan and her husband would just look at it as a chance to turn it into a business mixer, and I'm positive Dad and my brothers would understand." She saw his face. "What? You look like I just hit you in the face with a board."

Snake Eyes dug the two small velvet boxes out of his pocket and held them in his hand. Shana's eyes widened, and she froze, staring at them. Snake Eyes signed rapidly, _I saw these and loved them immediately. The maker just sent them to me yesterday after engraving them. I brought them here to see if they fit._

"I hoped this would be a double wedding," came Cam's voice behind Shana.

Shana spun, staring at her friend standing next to Charlie. "Seriously, Cam? You don't mind sharing your wedding day with us?"

"Of course not. Why would I? If not for you I wouldn't be here. You saved my life."

"And you saved mine. But I thought…maybe you might not like…"

"Shana. Charlie and I got married over Thanksgiving. This is a formality. And…I would never object to sharing anything with you. You and Charlie are the only true friends I've ever had."

"What am I, chopped liver?" came a new voice, and all three of them looked up, to see Clayton coming toward them, Liv right behind carrying a gurgling, cooing bundle of baby. But Clayton's warm smile belied his voice, and as he looked at Shana, Cam, Charlie, and Snake Eyes, there was humor and laughter in his eyes. "It's okay, I'm joking. So can I assume from the presence of those rings Snake Eyes just pulled out that I should catch that chaplain before he leaves?"

"He's leaving?" Shana stared at them, then said, "Cam if you really don't mind—"

"I don't," Cam shook her head firmly.

"And since you have the rings—"

Snake Eyes interrupted_. I_ _don't even know if you like them or not. They aren't…traditional_.

"Since when have I ever minded something that wasn't 'traditional?" Shana reached out with one hand, caressed the side of his face. "You picked them out, which means you like them. And if you like them, that means you'll be happy with them. That's all I need to know." And she was gone in a twitch of flaming curls and green satin, running after the dark-clad chaplain. Heads turned, watched her speak to the man, and the assembled Joes started to drift back to the gazebo as the man headed back to the archway.

Shana came back, grabbed Snake Eyes' arm, and hauled him up in front of the archway. Without a word Cam handed Shana the small bouquet of lilies and roses she held, and moments later Shana and Snake Eyes were standing in front of the chaplain.

It had all happened so fast Snake Eyes barely had time to think, and before he knew it the opening pleasantries were gone through and he was expected to utter vows. He was nonplussed for a moment, wondering what on earth he was going to say, and Stalker quietly plucked the two little velvet ring boxes out of his hands so he could speak.

He turned to Shana, and at the sight of her green eyes, glowing the same color as her dress, and the braids in her long red hair creating a halo around her head, he completely forgot his nervousness, his uncertainty, his awkwardness. All he could think of was her, and all the things he'd ever wanted to say to her but never had, and how for the long weeks when she was missing he'd wondered bleakly if he would ever have a chance to say all the things he'd ever wanted to say. And when he raised his hands to speak, he barely heard Allie's soft voice translating his sign language for the benefit of those who couldn't read his hands; for this one moment, he and Shana were the only two people in the world.

_I love you, Shana O'Hara. It took me by surprise because I'd never expected to fall in love. There were others but no one I was serious with before you. You were a complete surprise, I never dreamed I could fall so in love with someone so completely opposite from who I was. You are the sun to my shadow, the song in my silence. You are the strength in my steel, my reason for living, the star in my night, the other half—the better half—of my soul. You have given me more than friendship, more than love, more than life. We've been through some rough times, and I know there were times when I pushed you away, but you stayed by me, knowing I needed you even when I didn't know I did. I have been selfish, and because of that you've lost out on things that you wanted to do. I can't give you that back, but I swear from this moment that no matter what else happens around us, your happiness comes first and foremost with me. I love you, Shana O'Hara._


	16. Chapter 16: Wedding Gift

**Chapter 16: Wedding Gift**

**Author's Note:** Shana and Snake Eyes' wedding song is 'The Flame' from a group called Cheap Trick; Cam and Charlie's song is from Disney's movie 'Pocahontas'; Clayton and Liv's song is 'In My Heart' by Phil Collins from Disney's 'Tarzan' soundtrack.

Shana handed Cam the bouquet, her hands busy signing even as she spoke, her voice soft but firm. "I love you, Snake Eyes. I was attracted to you the first time you stepped on the mat to challenge me; I think I fell in love with you on that first date but I couldn't admit it to myself until much later. I think I always knew, though. No one has ever accepted me as freely and unconditionally as you have; no one has ever asked nothing of me except to be myself, and that is such a rare, unusual thing in my life that I thank God every day for giving you to me. There were times when you were so pigheaded I could have smacked you," a ripple of amused chuckles ran through the crowd of watching Joes, "But there were times when I was equally pigheaded and I commend you for not smacking me. So we're even." A tiny smile. "The last few months have taught me just how much I took you for granted; just how much you did for me that I never acknowledged, and how much separation from you hurts. Every moment when you aren't with me I look for you; my heart cries for you when we're apart, and I never, ever want to be apart from you again. So now, with these rings, I symbolize my need for you, my acknowledgement that you are my soulmate and without you I'd have no reason to live. You are my life, as I am yours, and with these rings, I thee wed." And, so softly that Snake Eyes was the only one who could hear her, she said in Gaelic, "My heart and soul are yours, now and forever."

Stalker held out the two ring boxes, and Snake Eyes grabbed the one with the women's ring and opened it. Blued Damascus steel shone from inside, eliciting gasps of delight from Stalker, Cam, and Charlie, and when Snake Eyes looked into Shana's eyes, he knew he'd made the right decision, because it had been months since the last time he'd seen that look in her eyes. Delight, joy, pure unadulterated happiness. She loved them as much as he did, and the ring fit perfectly as soon as he slipped it on her finger and drew her in his arms for a deep, soul-searing kiss.

Applause, cheers, whistles and howls greeted them as they parted, and they saw the radiantly happy faces around them moments before Shana was enveloped in a flurry of feminine hugs and Snake Eyes was drowned in a sea of backslaps and offered a beer.

He went looking for her after a while, driven by the desire to do just one thing before they left the party for somewhere more comfortable, and found her not in the middle of the crowd of girls, but standing by herself at the edge of the rocky promontory that jutted out over the Verrazano Narrows. She didn't turn as he came up, but she knew he was there; this new bond they shared, while at first he'd thought it was going to be slightly uncomfortable knowing where she was at all times and what she was doing, hadn't been intrusive or invasive at all. It had settled quietly in the back of his mind, just as the wedding ring had settled on his finger. It didn't feel strange or awkward, it was just there, and didn't remind him of its presence at all unless he needed it. The moment he turned his eyes inward to find that link, he saw the shining golden thread linking him to Shana, and if he slipped into a light trance, he could follow it with his mind and find her. He was getting better at that, it was getting easier, and Charlie was giving him lessons on how to subtly shift his perception of the bond so that he wouldn't intrude on her privacy. And Charlie assured him Cam was doing the same for Shana.

"I'm actually glad we did it like this. I would have much rather had a wedding where we could both enjoy ourselves than one where it was more about the guests being seen rubbing elbows with the right people. Dad doesn't care for the political maneuvering, but Mom does, and she and Siobhan would have made the whole thing a sociopolitical campaign. I'm glad we had this today." She turned to him now, and he saw the glow hadn't left her face. "How on earth did you know this is what I would have wanted?"

Part of him wanted to be a smart-ass male and tell her he always knew what she wanted, but the other half of him—the part of him that wanted to be in bed with her in another hour—said that being a wise husband would be a better choice if he hoped to consummate their marriage properly, so he told her the truth. _I honestly didn't. During the trial Alex took me to a swordsmith's shop, she said she'd been shopping and she saw these rings and they would be perfect. I saw one with a Claddagh design, but the holes would have been difficult to deal with given our lifestyles, and there's too many things the edges could get caught on. I ended up choosing simple bands and having the Claddagh design etched on it…and he added the inscription inside._

"There's an inscription?" Shana pulled hers off, looked closely at the inside of the band. "'Mo Shonuachar'," she read. "'My soulmate'. Snake Eyes, they are absolutely perfect, I couldn't have picked better rings." She slipped it back on, then wrapped her arms around him and leaned her cheek against the side of his chest without the bars. "I love you, Snake Eyes, and this has been the perfect day. I can't think of anything else that would make this any better."

_I can. There's one more thing I wanted to do. Actually, two._

"And that is…?"  
_One. I want to dance with you._

"You never told me you could dance!"

_I don't often, because I get worried about what I look like. But I do dance. My old sensei used to say 'Never give a sword to a man who can't dance'. And I know you can dance, and you don't get to often, particularly not with me._

Shana giggled, but thought about that for a moment. "A martial arts master who understands dance as art, who appreciates grace and life and beauty, is unlikely to go postal and use his abilities for evil ends. Okay, I get that. And the second thing?"

_I want to take you to our room before anyone else gets in and enjoy having you in privacy and peace and quiet._

Her face lit up and her green eyes grew hungry. "That sounds wonderful. So let's go dance. And then let's go and consummate our marriage, hey?" Her eyes sparkled mischievously.

He'd done some thinking about the song, and when they got back to the small grassy lawn where Allie and Dash were dancing, he nodded quietly to Jammer. Moments later the strains of the song he'd chosen floated on the air.

_Another night slowly closes in _

_And I feel so lonely_

_Touching heat freezing on my skin_

_I pretend you still hold me_

_I'm going crazy, I'm losing sleep_

_I'm in too far, I'm in way too deep over you._

_I can't believe you're gone._

_You were the first, you'll be the last._

He'd felt so lost, lonely, and empty, during the time she'd been missing; he'd barely slept, hadn't really eaten. Yes, he'd had girlfriends, and before her he certainly hadn't been a virgin, but no one had really touched him until he'd met her.

_Wherever you go, I'll be with you._

_Whatever you want, I'll give it to you_

_Whenever you need someone_

_To lay your heart and head upon_

_Remember after the fire, after all the rain,_

_I will be the flame,_

_I will be the flame._

The perfect song. Shana closed her eyes, letting a smile of contentment cross her face as she felt Snake Eyes' arms around her. Although they'd said that their lives were too busy and there was plenty of time to get married, really, they'd always been married. For the last ten years, in fact. There'd been no one but him for her, and she was equally sure there'd been no one but her for him. During the difficult recovery after the helicopter crash, no matter how he'd pushed her away she'd stayed, stubbornly, holding him when he cried from the pain, giving him her strength to lean on when recovery was difficult. And when she'd come back from Kennedy's island, he'd given her his strength to lean on, tried to help her heal in the only way he knew how to help her. Yes, this song he'd chosen had been perfect.

And as if their idea had caught on, she saw Cam and Charlie approach Jammer and place a request. As a new song started, they clasped hands in each other's arms.

_If I never knew you,_

_If I never felt this love_

_I would have no inkling of _

_How precious life can be._

_And if I never knew you,_

_I'd have lived my whole life through_

_Lost forever_

_If I never knew you._

Shana felt tears sting her eyes as she saw Cam looking up into Charlie's eyes whispering the words to the song to him. If Clayton hadn't met her, if he'd never made the decision to bring her to Joe base, where would Cam be now? What would have happened to her, lonely and isolated at her former base, part of her Ranger support group but not in it, an outsider, dealing with her squad mates' chauvinism, with a commanding officer who used her and her talents for the good of the squad but didn't make an effort to integrate her, didn't fully include her and change the culture of his command so that she wouldn't feel so lost and left out? Would she ever have been as happy as she was now?

_If I never knew you,_

_If I never felt this love_

_I would have no inkling of _

_How precious life can be._

_And I'm so grateful to you_

_I'd have lived my whole life through_

_Empty as the sky,_

_Never knowing why,_

_Lost forever_

_If I never knew you._

And where would Charlie be? He'd always been aloof. While not withdrawn, and certainly not as far out on the fringe with the Joes as Cam had been at Fort Benning, there'd always been a certain amount of emotional distance between Charlie and the rest of the Joes. There were very few Joes whom Charlie could count as a close friend, Snake Eyes being one of them, but with Cam's coming things had changed. He got involved with more things around the base trying to get her to come out of her shell, and in the process he'd cracked his too. Both of them had made such an impact on each other's lives, and on the lives of everyone around them, and she couldn't imagine seeing either of them ever alone anymore.

The song ended, although now Allie and Dash were out there, and even more interestingly, Liv had relinquished Auggie to Alex and Courtney as she stepped out with Clayton as a different song stated. As Snake Eyes took Shana's hand and led her away, toward their quarters, he heard the strains of the new song floating on air as Clayton and Liv danced:

_You'll be in my heart_

_No matter what they say._

_You'll be here in my heart, always._

_I'll be there for you always,_

_Always and always…_

The interior of Joe base was cool…and quiet. Practically everybody was out at the wedding, save for maybe a few who might be manning the base's security camera. Snake Eyes could care less what they thought as he shed his jacket as soon as they were inside, chasing after Shana giggling as they fled deeper into the labyrinthine maze of corridors that was their home, until he finally caught her at the door to their room and captured her mouth in his own hungry, fevered kiss. She returned it with interest, and his hands were already behind her looking for the zipper to the dress when she turned the knob and opened the door. They stumbled in, still lip-locked, and he turned to press her back to the door as he kissed her hungrily, his hands already sliding the shoulders off the dress when she gasped.

He froze, wondering if he'd been too eager, too anxious, as she pushed him away from her, but she headed for the bed. As he turned around and saw what lay there, he lost his train of thought as Shana reached for one of the two swords lying on the blanket atop the neatly-made bed.

Black Damascus steel with colored threads of blue and crimson running through it flashed out of the sheath, and his guess was confirmed; the colored Damascus steel swords from the shop where he'd bought their rings. As he picked up the second one and drew it, his guess was confirmed; this one was the red Damascus steel sword. Shana's. He handed her the red steel sword and took the black one, and she stared at it in sheer delight. "Snake Eyes, who would have…?"

He already knew; there was only one other person who knew of his fascination with this matched pair of swords. Alex. And as he looked down again, he saw the envelope sitting on the bed next to where the swords had lain, and Shana put her sword down long enough to snatch it up.

_Dear Shana, Snake Eyes:_

_ What can I say? Congratulations, I guess, would be in order; when I first met the two of you, on base after Flint and Allie brought me back from the Congo, I wasn't in any condition to recognize anything. But in the months since—has it really been almost a year now? It certainly doesn't seem that long at all—I've come to know you, know the rest of the people on this team, and you've become closer to me than some of the people in the DA's office where I work every day._

_ Snake Eyes, I saw you admiring these swords in the smith's shop, and he saw you admiring them too. When I'd first gone there I'd told him you were marrying a red-haired Irish lass, and when you went there, he remembered what I'd said and he was the one who suggested that these would be the perfect gift for both of you—I would have gotten you something traditional like a silver saltshaker! Thanks to the generous gift from the President after the Congolese fiasco, and a generous discount from the smith, I was able to get these for you—he said that these weapons were made to be used but cherished, and the others who had looked at the swords were basically going to put them up on a wall and never touch them again, and that was not what he made them for. He liked you, was positive that Shana would have the same attitude you did toward use and care of weapons, and said he couldn't be happier selling them to me for you, knowing that you two would treasure, cherish and care for them as you used them. So you now have a completely unique set of his-and-her swords as you embark on your life together, and Liv and I wish you well._

_Alex._

_P.S. This is officially a gift from myself, Liv, Clayton, and Ettienne._

"They are wonderful," Shana murmured, marveling at the sword as she stepped out of the dress and kicked it over to the side. "Beauty and functionality, and the balance is exquisite. Just like you." She sheathed the sword, laid it carefully on the dresser, then firmly took Snake eyes' sword from his hands. "All right. Now where were we?"


	17. Chapter 17: Honeymoon-Atlanta

**Chapter 17: Honeymoon-Atlanta**

Steel rang as the two combatants clashed, disengaged, circled, clashed again. They faced each other over the mat, both breathing hard, then lunged for each other again.

This time when they disengaged Snake Eyes signaled the end of the bout and pulled off his balaclava even as Shana scrubbed her forearm over her sweating forehead and met him in the middle of the mat, both of them inspecting the blades of their new swords. "Not a dent. Not even a nick. Mine's so well balanced it feels like an extension of my arm," Shana said quietly after she got done minutely inspecting the blade of her red Damascus steel sword. "These are priceless. I can't thank Alex enough for getting these."

At the far end of the dojo the door that led out to the gym opened, and she looked up, smiling as she saw Cam and Charlie come in. "Here's the other set of honeymooners! So when are you leaving for your honeymoon?"

"We've decided to stay," Cam said as her eyes were inevitably drawn downward to the beautiful crimson ripples down the dark blade of the sword she held. "Oh, Shana."

"Alex, Olivia, Clayton, and Ettienne's wedding gift to us," Shana smiled as she handed the sword to Cam. Cam took it, staring at it, entranced by the ripples playing down the length of the blade. "What did you mean, you decided to stay?"

Since Cam had already moved toward the middle of the dojo, trying a few experimental swings as she moved through an abbreviated sword drill, and Snake Eyes moved along with her, taking his sword to give her an opponent, Shana found herself talking to Charlie. "What did she mean, you both decided to stay? Stay here, for your honeymoon?"

"My parents will be staying at her cottage in western New York while their house is being built on the foundation of Yu's former vacation lodge."

Shana blinked. "Your parents? Did I miss something?"

Charlie turned to watch Cam and Snake Eyes drilling on the mat. "Cam does not want the property. Nor did she want the money. The three million that Ms. Carmichael got for her has been placed at my parents' disposal to build themselves a house on the former site of Yu's vacation cabin, so they can be close to us when we're on leave and at her cottage. Her tribe has welcomed my parents, and Cam decided that it would be best to give them the use of her cottage during the build, while we stayed here."

"So basically you're staying here because there's nowhere else for you to go." Shana was blunt.

"Cam has also decided to look at scar removal options, and Doc said he'd look into what would produce the best results, so we are also waiting to see what he turns up."

"You're staying here because there's nowhere else for you to go."

Charlie blew out his breath. "Essentially. Although there are other reasons."

She gestured to Snake Eyes to come off the mat; he disengaged from Cam, and both of them came over to join Charlie and Shana at the side of the dojo. "You're coming with us to Atlanta on our honeymoon."

Cam's mouth dropped open. "Um…Shana…are you sure? I mean…well…don't you have to talk to Snake Eyes about it first?"

"You're coming with us to Atlanta." Shana's firm tone brooked no argument. "Snake Eyes, Cam gave Charlie's parents Yu's property and three million dollars in restitution to build a house out there in western New York by the reservation so they'd be close when Cam and Charlie are on leave. So they are staying at Cam's cottage while the build is taking place and she and Charlie were saying they would stay here for their honeymoon."

Snake Eyes' look expressed horror at the thought of them staying here.

"So I told them they're leaving with us on the noon flight to Atlanta. I want to have a look at this plantation house I supposedly now own, and I'm sure it's big enough for all of us. I also want Cam to get to meet the rest of my family, we have to tell Mom and Siobhan we got married, and Dad should spend some time with the newest members of the family, get to know Cam and you. So they're coming to Atlanta with us."

Snake Eyes grinned and nodded.

"Um…don't you have to let your parents know we're coming, and is this going to cause trouble with your sister? I don't think she likes me very much, and I don't want to get in the way—"

"Cam." Shana stopped her with a finger on her lips. "I can let Dad and Mom know we're on the way with a simple phone call. I don't care what Siobhan thinks, she's caused enough trouble already with the stunts she pulled during the trial, I don't care if she doesn't like you, I'm sure Dad and my brothers will, and even if Mom's probably going to be lukewarm on the subject she'll be okay once Dad tells her this is what he wants. She's never been able to change his mind once he had his heart set on something, and you are not going to be in the way." Shana huffed out a breath in exasperation as she saw Cam's doubtful look. "Look, Cam, stop thinking of everyone else first, just this once, and think about what you'd like. And if you have problems with that, well…this is what I want."

"I still think this isn't going to be a good idea."

Shana rolled her eyes, took her new sword out of Cam's grasp, and turned the younger woman toward the door. "Go pack. Lightly. Atlanta's kind of warm this time of year. And there will be plenty of opportunity to go shopping if you forget something."

Spring in Atlanta was more than just 'kind of' warm. Especially this spring; with a winter that had been exceptionally mild, the insects and the humidity had started early, and Shana was glad she'd chosen a tank top when she'd dressed. Not that New York wasn't also warm, at least this March (this winter had been one of the warmest on record ever in the US) but in southern states like Georgia the word humidity was a curseword.

They'd all packed lightly; being in the military quickly taught you what was absolutely essential and what was not, and what they each brought fit in one bag each, and so getting through airport security and baggage check was easy and took less time than usual. Shana led them out of the terminal, looking around as if scanning for something, and finally waved when she spotted…something. A large SUV detached itself from the far end of the line of cars and cabs waiting at the curb and came toward them, and when it pulled up and the window rolled down, Shana's Dad was grinning at them. "Need a lift, soldier?" he grinned, and beamed as Shana bounced up to the driver's side window, threw her arms around him as he leaned out, and kissed him on the cheek. "Thanks, Dad," she said, and indicated the passenger doors. "Cam, Charlie, Snake Eyes, in the back," she ordered in her best drill-sergeant tone, and they hurried to obey.

It wasn't until she was sitting in the front seat and they were on the way out of the airport when her father finally spoke up. "So have I lost my daughter or gained a son?" he asked, and then chuckled at Shana's flush. "Shan, I could hardly have missed noticing that ring on your finger."

Shana grinned and said, "You gained a son, Dad. We got married a couple days ago back at base, at the same time Charlie and Cam made their wedding official. Snake Eyes took my name—he's officially an O'Hara. And since we're now all family—his real name is Terence. Terence O'Hara. He and his sister were twins, their parents named them Terence and Theresa."

Mr. O'Hara broke into hearty laugh. "Won't that be one in the eye for your mother and your sister," he said after he finally caught his breath. "I went back to Atlanta after the trial a week ago with Siobhan on the same flight, and all she could think of was to carp on Terence's 'unsuitability' to be one of the Atlanta O'Hara's. And your mother agreed with her." He sighed. "I love your mother, and your sister, Shan, but sometimes I don't understand the way they think. Yes, the Atlanta O'Hara's have been a leading light in Atlanta society and a force to be reckoned with, but at some point in the past we were no better known than the next Joe Schmoe on the street. I don't understand this at all." He sighed. "I did talk to your mother when I got back home after the trial, and told her you were engaged. She wasn't really happy with it, but she said if he made you happy she couldn't say anything about it. And I told her that Cam saved your life, brought you back to us, and she said absolutely Cam can be a part of the family. She may be overly concerned sometimes with issues of class and suitability, but she does love you." He sighed again. "Siobhan might be a problem. But you leave her to us, your mother and I will handle her. You're on your honeymoon and nothing should get in the way of you enjoying your new husband."

And, true to her father's word, when Shana walked in the front door of the O'Hara home her mother immediately wrapped her in a warm hug, complete with suspiciously damp eyes. "I may not approve of everything you've done, but if you had died or never come back, I would have missed you," and as this was the most emotional Shana had seen her mother in a long time, she simply hugged her mother back and introduced Cam. "Mom. This is Cam Arlington."

She assumed that her mother would have gotten a rundown on the trial proceedings from Siobhan, and so her mother would know who Cam was and what role she'd played in Shana's rescue, and she wasn't disappointed as her mother stepped forward and gave Cam a similar hug. "Thank you. Thank you for bringing my daughter back, I owe you a debt I can never repay." Snake Eyes got a slightly more restrained hug, and Charlie got a shake of the hand.

"Shana, your father told me you were coming to dinner and bringing your friends, so I made arrangements for a full dinner. You can take your husband…" she hesitated.

"We're family now, Mom," Shana said with a hint of amusement in her voice. "His name is Terence."

Her mother nodded, looking relieved. "You can take Terence to your room, and I had the guest room prepared for Charlie and Cameron. Brian's out of town at the moment, but Sean and Frank will be joining us, along with Siobhan and her husband, tonight. Now, if you'd like to go upstairs and freshen up…"

Cam tried very hard to keep her face schooled into a politely pleasant expression when Siobhan strolled into the dining room and saw Shana sitting there next to Snake Eyes. She ran to hug her sister, then held her at arms' length and scrutinized her. "You look skinny. Better than you did, since you lost some of that muscle and your arms are smoother, but you're still too skinny." She grabbed Shana's arm, made a face. "And at least you could have covered up those awful scars. You look terrible."

Shana quickly pulled her hands out of Siobhan's and turned away, flushing pink. "Nice to see you too," she muttered, and gave a very brief but polite hello to Siobhan's husband before they all sat down to dinner.

Siobhan forced a stiff, polite nod to Charlie and Cam but couldn't seem to manage anything else. That was fine with Cam; she wasn't sure if she could have managed anything polite to Siobhan, particularly not after the remark she'd just made to Shana. She was angry on Shana's behalf, but this was Shana's sister and therefore family and it wasn't her place to say anything to the other woman. She couldn't deny, however, that Siobhan's inane chatter and pointed remarks grated on her nerves.

Halfway through the meal, Siobhan said, "So I hear you're finally getting married?"

Shana steeled herself for the unpleasant scene to follow; only Siobhan would have not picked up on the presence of the ring on her left ring finger. "We got married already. A small private ceremony for our friends back at base."

"Back at your base? When your family is here and would have loved to share it with you? How could you?" Siobhan flushed in outrage. "How could you do that? Mom was looking forward to this, Shana, and now you've selfishly gone and cut us out of what should have been our prerogative!"

Shana gritted her teeth and said evenly, "It was a spur-of-the moment decision. Cam and Charlie were getting married by the chaplain at base and it just…seemed opportune." No way was she going to tell her sister what she really thought—that part of the reason she'd chosen that option was to avoid the fuss that Siobhan and her mother would have made.

Her father spoke. "Siobhan, it wasn't up to us to say what Shana does with her life. It's her choice."

Siobhan turned on him. "Don't tell me you're not upset about what she did," she spat. "Shana's always been your favorite."

"I don't have favorites among my children, Siobhan, I treat each of you as you demonstrate you want to be treated. Now sit down and eat dinner and stop creating a scene."

Siobhan sat abruptly, deflated, and silence reigned in the dining room for a while. Eventually Sean asked Charlie something about his tribe, and Charlie answered, and conversation resumed normally. Cam got interested, forgot to try and focus on her plate, and pretty soon she and Charlie were recounting the story of their unusual courtship, his playing his flute in the rain outside her cottage window until she invited him in. Shana's mother smiled, seeming to be truly interested, and Charlie and Cam offered to play their flutes for the O'Hara clan after supper.

It was during a lull in the conversation that Siobhan finally spoke again. "So you two got married at the same time Cameron and Charlie did?" she said to Shana, who nodded once, curtly, warily. "Still don't see why you couldn't wait to get married here. Did you even have a decent dress?"

Cam said quietly, "Allie—one of the soldiers at base—did her hair in Celtic braids and she had a really lovely green dress. I told the girls I wanted them to wear whatever was comfortable, but they insisted they wanted to dress for the occasion since the guys at base rarely see the girls dressed up. The guys also wore whatever they wanted—Snake Eyes wore his dress blues but some of the guys even came in Hawaiian shirts and flip flops."

Siobhan sneered elegantly. "All those soldiers there and they couldn't even put in the effort to dress for your wedding. Some friends."

Cam looked up and said, firmly, "Yes. They are our friends. That was why I wanted everyone to be comfortable, so they could enjoy the day. It didn't matter what they wore so long as everyone had a good time and enjoyed themselves. A soldier's life is hard and we don't get many opportunities to relax, so this was especially important to me."

Siobhan sniffed. "If you say so. I wanted everyone to be nicely dressed for my wedding. But then, I guess you Indians aren't as civilized so it doesn't matter as much."

"Siobhan!" Mr. and Mrs. O'Hara both spoke at the same time.

"Sorry," Siobhan flipped her hair, took a sip from her glass, not actually sounding sorry at all.

Charlie looked like he'd bitten a lemon. Snake Eyes was a bare step away from standing and marching out—or strangling the bitch who sat coolly across the table from his wife, who at the moment was flushed red with embarrassment and anger. It was Cam who finally spoke, her face impassive and smooth as it always looked when she was reining in strong emotion. "It's all right. I realize Siobhan was disappointed that she didn't get to share Shana's wedding with her. It was a beautiful day, and we all enjoyed ourselves. Perhaps you could plan a small gathering of family and friends to celebrate the occasion while Shana's on leave here."

"We'll have to. Since you seem really important to Shana, we'll probably have to include you too. Just make sure Mom gives you lessons in etiquette—after all, an ugly half-breed savage like you wouldn't have any idea how to behave in civilized company."

Snake Eyes felt his mouth drop open at the outright cruelty of that statement. Beside him, Sean was doing a similar landed-fish imitation. Mrs. O'Hara looked just as shocked. Charlie was frozen. Shana stared at Siobhan, slowly putting her fork down, eyes snapping furious green sparks.

Cam gave a choked sob, and Snake Eyes and Charlie looked at her, to find two large tears making their way down her cheeks. Shana's father reached out to Cam, his hand covering hers, but before anyone could say anything, Shana rose out of her chair, picked up her plate—still with slices of roast, mashed potatoes, gravy and beans—and flung the contents directly into her sister's face. When she spoke her voice was flat and deadly. "I could forgive everything you said about me. I could maybe even forgive what you said about my husband. But I will never, ever forgive you for what you just said to Cam. She risked everything—her life, her health, her sanity—to get me out of an impossible situation, and she deserves better than your cutting remarks and your insults." She turned to Snake Eyes, Charlie, and Cam. "Go grab your things. We're going to the plantation house tonight. I'm not spending a minute more in this spiteful bitch's company." Ignoring her mother's shocked, 'Shana!' she left the dining room.


	18. Chapter 18: Plantation

**Chapter 18: Plantation**

"I'm so sorry," Shana's father said gently to Cam.

"I am too. I don't know what got into Siobhan this time, she was really over the top tonight." Sean didn't take his eyes off the road, but they could hear the anger in his voice.

"Are you okay?" Shana's father handed Cam a tissue; that simple act of kindness threatened to undo the tenuous hold she had on her emotions and she almost started crying again.

To cover that she scrubbed her eyes with the tissue. "I'm sorry for being such a baby," she stammered. "I should be used to it by now, I heard it all the time growing up and later at school in New York."

"You are _family_ now," Sean interrupted again, this time taking his eyes off the road and fixing her with a look that told her just how angry this O'Hara brother was with his sister. "There is _never_ a time when you should 'be used to it' coming from your own _family_."

"But you're not really—I'm not really—"

"Dad said you were. So you are. If you want to argue about it, you can argue about it with Shan and Dad, but I'll warn you ahead of time you're not going to get anywhere with that argument. Even when Shan was little, I didn't win arguments with her often. When Dad was on her side—never."

Mr. O'Hara looked toward the back row of seats in the SUV, where a thundercloud named Shana O'Hara had been sitting, suspiciously quiet but certainly not settled. "Shan? You haven't said anything since we left."

"Keep that bitch away from me." The venom in her voice would have killed a cobra.

Mr. O'Hara sighed. "Shan—"

"Don't. Don't 'Shan' me, Dad. She's pissed me off lots of times before but I always forgave her because she was my sister. But this time…I can't forgive her. I won't. Cam sacrificed so much to come and get me—I owe her my life, and I wasn't expecting my own sister to value my life so little that she would just cut Cam's feelings open like that. Tell her and Mom I never, ever want to see her again." Mr. O'Hara opened his mouth to remonstrate with her, but she shook her head. "That's it. I'm done."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be the one who caused problems," Cam ventured timidly.

"You aren't the problem. Siobhan is." Mr. O'Hara said determinedly.

"Here it is," Sean said suddenly, making a hard right turn onto what they could dimly see out the darkened windshield as a winding, tree-lined driveway. "The number on the mailbox is this address."

They all sat forward and looked through the windshield as a large white house came into view. Shana reluctantly let go of her anger and looked too—and whistled. "Wow. It's not the size of the old plantation houses, but that's still pretty sizable." She reached for her bag, fished around in a zippered pocket for the keys. "They gave me keys when they gave me the deed—here we are—"

The house was immaculate. It was obvious that Kennedy Financial had been determined to make an impression on the business guests who stayed at this Atlanta retreat; the chandelier hanging in the roomy entrance hall with its high trey ceilings was a masterpiece of crystalline beauty, hung with tiny crystal prisms that caught the light and threw dancing rainbows everywhere. The curved staircase from the foyer floor arched gracefully toward the second floor, ornamented by a solid wooden banister. Snake Eyes, Cam, Charlie, Mr. O'Hara, and Sean put the bags they carried down in the middle of the hall floor and stared around them in delight.

Shana vanished down the hallway directly in front of them, and a moment later she yelled from the kitchen, all trace of her bad mood missing from her voice. "Whoa! You should see this place! Look at this kitchen!" And they all followed her down the hallway.

The kitchen was outfitted with stainless steel everything. Stainless steel refrigerator, a top of the line, expensive model that had every feature they could possibly imagine; stove, double sink, dishwasher, gleaming expanse of granite countertop. There was a breakfast nook in the corner that was big enough to seat ten, and through an archway on one side, there was a spacious recreation room with a huge TV that had to be at least fifty inches, three of the most popular electronic video game systems complete with a selection of games for each one, and an installed sound system that made Sean's eyes pop. "Whoa. Shan. You own all of this now?"

_This and three million dollars._ Snake Eyes' hands flashed; Cam translated for Shana's father and brother.

"The restitution judgment from the case." Shana's father nodded. "My baby girl's a millionaire. Oh, hey, Sean, Siobhan doesn't know that yet, does she? She left the courtroom before the judge ruled on that. And I think I neglected to tell your mother."

Sean grinned maliciously. "Won't that be one in her eye. She'll apologize to Shana just to get a look in here."

"She's not coming here. I don't want her in here. This is my place." Shana looked around the rec room, then turned off the light and led the way back through the kitchen, past the half-bath in the hallway, and then up the staircase to the bedrooms on the second story. This too was airy and spacious, six rooms, each with their own full bath, tastefully decorated in subtle earth tones and warm brown shades. The master suite, at the end of the hall, had an enormous California King sized bed, four dressers that, upon inspection, were empty, and a master bath easily the size (and as well-outfitted) as the one she and Snake Eyes had designed for themselves at their California cabin.

"This one's yours," Cam said immediately as soon as she saw the suite. "You'll probably want to redecorate at some point, though. The décor here doesn't really fit your personality."

Shana grinned as she dropped her bag on the floor. "And where are you and Charlie going to sleep?"

"We got the room at the other end of the hall." Cam grinned cheerfully. "I thought you'd want your privacy, and Charlie and I wanted ours too. This way there won't be any…overlapping sound."

They dropped their bags in the bedrooms they'd chosen and met Mr. O'Hara and Sean downstairs. "Are you sure you're going to be okay?" Mr. O'Hara said a little anxiously.

"We'll be fine, Dad," Shana said, smiling cheerfully, her good mood restored. "What do you think is going to happen? Think maybe this place has a ghost?"

Sean shuddered, and she eyed him in disbelief. "Sean. All those horror moves we watched when we were younger, and you shudder at the thought of a ghost?" He shrugged. She laughed at him. "Go on. We're going to be fine here. They wouldn't have used this as a business retreat if it were haunted."

"We'll stop by and see how you're doing in the morning. Also, if you're going to be staying here, I'm guessing you might want to rent a car...or buy one, seeing as how you're a millionaire," he teased, and Shana smacked him lightly, affectionately, on the arm. "Good. There's my girl. See you tomorrow, Shan." Mr. O'Hara gave Shana a last kiss on the cheek and hustled Sean to the door.

With the house now theirs, Shana put her hands on her hips and turned to look at her three companions. "Okay. Let's see what we can find to eat; my sister got me so wound up I didn't eat much, and I'm starving."

The refrigerator was practically empty save for a six-pack of beer sitting in the back of the fridge; not the kind Shana and Snake Eyes preferred but still a good brand nonetheless. They each took one, even Cam, while Shana scoured the rest of the kitchen. The freezer was stocked with frozen vegetables and TV dinners, the cabinets were full of canned, nonperishable items; the cabinets under the kitchen island was generously filled with all sizes and kinds of pots, pans, and cooking utensils, so after a consultation with them, Shana decided to cook up some pasta, open some canned chicken ("Would be better with fresh chicken, preferably grilled, but we can try that tomorrow once I have a chance to go grocery shopping,") added some olives and sprinkled grated Parmesan on top, then tossed it all in a light vinaigrette dressing.

They settled in the rec room with their dinner, eating with good appetite—this wasn't as filling as the perfectly-done roast and potatoes and gravy that they'd had in front of them at Shana's parents place, but the company was infinitely better—and Shana even turned on the big-screen TV, flipping through channels till she found a comedian they were all familiar with, and they sat and had a wonderful laugh as the comedian went through his routine with his ventriloquist dummies. The levity helped relax them after the tension of the early evening, and they were all relaxed and much happier when they finished and stood up just before midnight, intending to retire to their rooms.

That was when they heard a tremendous crash from underneath them.

"What the hell—?" Shana frowned as she turned, trying to identify the sound. "Where did that come from?" They backtracked through the kitchen and finally saw a door half-hidden behind some draperies lining the hall toward the front foyer. When Shana opened it, it disclosed a set of steps leading downward.

Cam drew back, and Charlie put a hand protectively on her shoulder. Shana reacted first, going to the kitchen island and pulling out a large chopping knife from the block on the counter; then she reached out, groped for a light switch on the wall beside the top of the stairs and descended down the steps.

"It's a wine cellar," she called a moment later. "It looks like a bottle of wine here fell and shattered. Come on down, it's okay." Snake eyes descended first, Cam in the middle, Charlie bringing up the rear, and they followed Shana down.

It was indeed a wine cellar. Cool and dark, one wall lined with a wooden rack that held dusty bottles of wine and whiskey. What struck them as odd was that usually there would be a small wet bar in a basement room like this—it was big enough to be a male recreation room, and Shana could almost see a pool table in the middle of the room and another TV in the corner. However, even though it was finished and would have been perfect for one, the only thing down here was the wine, and even the sink and small counter to one side looked dusty and unused. "I wonder why this was never finished," Shana said as she crossed the floor to the source of the noise.

The wine bottle had shattered on the floor after ostensibly falling from the wine rack. Not an especially expensive vintage, Shana noted as she picked up a shard and saw 1986 on what remained of the label, but a respectable age, and the bottle was even dusty. She frowned at it. "I wonder what caused this to just up and fall off the shelf like that?" she wondered aloud as she looked at the empty spot on the rack where it had apparently been, then reached over and grabbed the side, giving it a tug.

The rack didn't move an inch. Neither did any of the other wine bottles. It had all been built very securely and sturdily into the wall to keep just such incidents like this from happening.

"Oh well." She shrugged and put the piece of bottle down carefully, then spotted a broom and dustpan off to one side. "Just what I needed. Let's sweep this up and mop up the wine and we'll go to bed."

They cleaned up the mess, put the mop, bucket, broom and dustpan back, and were turning back toward the stairs when there was a crash from the wine rack. And this time Shana saw it out the corner of her eye; the wine bottle lifted out of the cradle the rack made for it, slid out a short way, and then just fell to the floor.

"There was no one there!" She was already in motion, skidding to a stop next to the broken glass. "I saw it. There was no one there, nothing touching it. It just lifted out of the rack and fell!"

"I saw it too, I think," Cam said slowly. "But there was something else, something there. The air sort of…shimmered, like heat rising off the pavement on a summer day."

"Think the place could be haunted?" Charlie asked Shana.

"I don't know," she said tiredly, heading for the mop and bucket. "Come on, let's get this cleaned up."

This time, after they'd cleaned up, she put her hands on her hips, facing empty air. "Now listen here, you," she said firmly. "We're tired, we've flown a long way, and we want to get some sleep. Stop breaking stuff, okay? I'm the new owner of this place, it belongs to me, and I have no problem bringing in an exorcist if I have to in order to get rid of you. If you like it here, fine—just don't get in my way."

There was silence; everyone subconsciously held their breaths. There was an odd sort of feeling in the air, as of someone was listening and had agreed, and then abruptly the presence they somehow felt was there suddenly departed.

"You've acquired a haunted property," Cam said to Shana, eyes wide.

"I'll settle it tomorrow. I don't feel like dealing with it now. Seriously," Shana addressed thin air. "I'm going to bed now and I will deal with you later. If you break any more wine bottles it'll just stay on the floor until tomorrow, okay?" she turned toward the stairs and ascended them firmly. Cam, Charlie, and Snake Eyes followed.

Just before she closed the basement door, she paused to listen. No more crashes, no more breaking glass. She smiled and closed the door. And then took the precaution of grabbing one of the chairs from the rec room and propped the back of it under the doorknob, tilting it back on its rear legs so that it would wedge the door firmly closed.

As they climbed the stairs Shana turned to them. "You don't seriously think the place could be haunted, do you?" she said.

"I don't know," Cam shrugged. "The place is certainly old enough to have a ghost, as such things usually go. And you also have to think that not only did Kennedy Financial own the place and bring business clients here, it's also possible Kennedy himself may have used this when he was in Atlanta, and if he did…what he did…to us on his island, what do you think he might have done while he was here by himself? Tomorrow I'd like to take a look at the whole estate, see if I can find a place where he could have…you know."

Shana raised her eyebrow, then shrugged. "Okay. Tomorrow. For now, let's turn in. I am absolutely exhausted."

She got dressed—or undressed, as it happened, since they were in a place of their own and it was unlikely that there would be an emergency that would require her to get up in the middle of the night, so she took a quick shower in the luxurious master suite and then slipped between the sheets with Snake Eyes, both of them gloriously naked, and said cheerfully, "So what do you think so far?"

_Your sister is a bitch and I never want to see her again._

Shana's face clouded. "Well, besides that."

Snake Eyes tilted his head, looked at the ceiling above them. _The place is beautiful. I really do like it. Except for the ghost in the basement._

"You really think there is a ghost?"

_I don't see what else it could have been. There was definitely no one there but us when that second bottle lifted off the rack and shattered on the floor. And yes, I did sort of feel the presence of something else down in the basement with us. I'm not ready to say yet that it definitely was a ghost, but it certainly seems like it. However, I guess as long as it stays in the basement and restricts itself to breaking cheap bottles of wine, I can't see that we have much to complain about. But the refrigerator does need to be stocked if we're going to stay here._

"Do you want to spend our honeymoon here? Or are we going to go on to the cabin in California like we planned?" They'd decided to come and check out the plantation, but with the caveat that if they didn't like it they'd go out to the Sierra Nevada cabin.

_Let's try it here for a bit. This place has its attractions. As long as your sister stays away._


	19. Chapter 19: Horses

**Chapter 19: Horses**

"Good morning!"

Shana jumped up from her seat at the breakfast nook, where she and Snake Eyes and Cam and Charlie were having breakfast and ran to the door at the sound of her father's voice. "Morning, Dad!"

"Good morning, Shan." Her father kissed her cheek good morning, then put his fists on his hips in mock sternness. "And do you always leave your front door unlocked for every wandering hobo who walks by to come in?"

"Some hobo you'd make," Shana rolled her eyes, then grinned at her father. "Besides, the threat isn't out there, it's in here."

"What's that supposed to mean? You trying to kill your new husband already? Give him some time, Shana. Time and training. It works miracles with even the densest man." Mr. O'Hara said as she stepped back and allowed him to step in after her and close the door. Even though it was still early in the morning, the humidity was already high and climbing higher. It was going to be another sticky, humid, muggy Atlanta day, and Shana had put on a tank top and shorts this morning with a wish that they had decided to go out to the cabin; it would be much cooler and drier. The plantation house here, as lovely as it was, simply wasn't 'home'. _I wonder if I could get the historic society to buy it and maintain it?_ She wondered. _Or turn it onto a bed and breakfast. Yeah. That would be nice. It's not that far away from the downtown business district._ Since it was used as a business retreat, could that be leveraged to advertise it for business conferences or short-term corporate housing? _Nah, it'll do better as a bed and breakfast. I grew up here, and this should be my home, but it doesn't feel like home anymore; home is the cabin in California._

She nearly ran into her father's back as he stopped to look at the chair still propped under the doorknob of the basement door. "What on earth is this?"

"Er. We had some…interesting experiences last night. Come into the kitchen and have breakfast and I'll tell you about it."

While the refrigerator hadn't been stocked with anything that would perish, items in a freezer could be left frozen almost indefinitely, and she'd found a huge box of frozen waffles and frozen sausage. A few seconds in the microwave for each person's plate, and they were having as hearty a breakfast as any they'd ever had on base and plenty more if any of them wanted seconds or thirds. Coffee had been kept in tightly-sealed canisters, and it had been the first thing that Snake Eyes made that morning (knowing how grumpy she got before getting her first cup in the morning), so Shana was feeling pretty cheerful as she put a plate down and forked a couple of waffles onto it for her Dad.

Over breakfast she told Mr. O'Hara about the events of the evening before. "I swear, the bottle just jumped out of the rack and smashed on the floor," she said as her father got up, opened the basement door, and looked down into the basement.

"Well, the place is old enough to have a ghost, I'd say," Mr. O'Hara said as he turned on the light to the basement and put a foot down on the top step, testing the wood steps for soundness. "In fact, I think the locals said there have been unusual sounds around the place—"

The doorbell rang, and Shana headed for the front door, curious. The curiosity disappeared when she saw Siobhan, and she moved to slam the door in her sister's face.

"I came to say I was sorry!" Siobhan exclaimed, putting her hand on the doorframe, and Shana paused in the act of slamming the door; as much as she hated Siobhan right now, she still didn't want to break her sister's fingers. "I didn't mean to say all the stuff I said last night, I was disappointed I wouldn't get to share the day with my sister and my new brother-in-law, and upset that you chose to share the day with someone who isn't family."

"Dad made Cam part of the family." Oh the sour expression on Siobhan's face—Shana could almost have laughed. 'So she's now your sister too. And Snake Eyes took on the O'Hara name when he married me, so he's an O'Hara too."

Considering how much Siobhan hated Snake Eyes, Siobhan was making an admirable effort to control herself, and Shana wondered why—until she saw Siobhan's eyes flick upward, toward the high arched entryway to the manor; and then past Shana, to get a peek at the interior. And her sister's niceness was explained. Siobhan hadn't come here with an olive branch of peace, she just wanted to see what Shana now owned. Uh huh.

"You're not coming in, Siobhan," She planted herself firmly in the doorway, folding her arms. "This is my house now, and you are not welcome in it while I'm here. Not after your rudeness and insults. I'm your sister, I deserve better than you, and so does Cam. Now go away. I don't want you here."

"Seriously, Shan, can't I come in and we can talk about this? I know Dad's here, his car's out front—Dad!" she called out. "Shana won't let me in—"

A sudden gust of cold air—really cold air—made Shana turn in astonishment to see who was behind her, causing her to step back from the door. Siobhan took that as an opportunity to try and push her way in, only to be stymied a moment later as the door literally slammed shut in her face. Shana stood staring in surprised befuddlement as it closed in front of her, without her touching it; a moment later, the deadbolt turned on its own, and she heard the click as it shot home.

From the other side of the door she heard Siobhan's fist hit the door, saw the knob jiggle slightly as her sister tried to turn the knob and open it, but Shana made no move to open the door again. "Well," she said at last to the empty air. "This ghost thing might be an unusual thing for me, but at least you're a helpful ghost, you don't just break bottles of wine." She cleared her throat. "Okay. That was my sister, Siobhan. She is not allowed in this house while I'm in it. You have my permission to scare the hell out of her if she tries to break in or something."

"Shana. That's mean," came an amused voice at the doorway, and she looked up to see Cam nearly doubled over in laughter. "Who knows what this ghost will think of to do to her?"

Shana reconsidered, then addressed the air. "You have permission to scare her, not to kill her or harm her, okay?" Grudgingly, she added "Siobhan's still my sister even if I may not like her much."

Cam was still laughing as she pushed herself off the doorframe. "Come on, let's go finish breakfast."

They were just finishing up and Shana was trying to figure out how to work the dishwasher when there was a knock at the front door. She went to it, expecting to see her mother or Siobhan again, but this time it was a man wearing a t-shirt and jeans. "Yes?" she said politely.

"Morning, Ma'am," and she heard the Southern drawl in his voice. "Mister Bennett called yesterday and told us the place'd been sold, so I came over this mornin' to make sure the place was clean and tend the horses. Wasn't expectin' to see you here, Ma'am."

"We got in very late last night. I'm Shana O'Hara."

"Pardon me, Ma'am…but you wouldn't be one of them Atlanta O'Hara's, would you?"

"Yes, I am one of 'them Atlanta O'Haras'," Shana said, glaring at Cam, who was (silently) laughing so hard her shoulders were shaking. "What gave it away?"

"Well, you kinda got the look of the clan, what with your red hair an' all," and Cam almost fell over.

Shana rolled her eyes, but Cam's laughter was infectious and she finally smiled. "Okay. So come on in and tell me what I need to know about the place."

She might have been the black sheep of the family to her sister, but Shana had absorbed enough of her mother's lessons in etiquette to offer the man a breakfast of waffles and sausage, as any well-bred Southern lady would have done. The man seemed grateful to accept, and over the breakfast he told them about the place. "Four acres of horse trails all around here; sometimes the guests would go out on the horses, other times they'd take out our ATVs and go ridin' around. The local kids sneak in to go dirt-bikin' sometimes; Mr. Kennedy got really mad about that and told me to run 'em out when I catches them, but since the place was empty a lotta the time I really didn't see the harm in lettin' em use the trails, Better than ridin' their bikes all over the roads and gettin' hit by drivers. They's smart kids, too; they knows if there's a car on the drive they don't come on the property; that there Mr. Kennedy, he's powerful mean. Little girl lost her dog come chasin' it on the land once and he darn near shot the dog." He cleared his throat. "Look, it ain't none of my business to say, but when it happened I didn' t like the way he looked at that little girl, and later when it was all over the papers what he did to you an' the other young lady there," he inclined his head toward Cam, who nodded quietly, "I knew he was guilty because he looked at that little girl the same way. "

"Thank you, Shana said, warmly enough that the man would understand she knew he was sympathetic, but shortly enough so that he wouldn't feel it was a topic open to further discussion. "So you take care of the horses? How many are there? I'll admit, I can't imagine what I'd do with horses," and she glared at Snake Eyes, who simply gave her a wide smile. Cam nearly choked on her laughter.

"There's two, both quiet , not much of a challenge to learn to ride if you're so minded. Good sturdy saddle stock, a palomino mare called Sunshine cause her coat's that bright, and a big dark snowflake Appaloosa gelding called Storm."

"I don't know much about horses, so I have no idea what you're talking about," Shana confessed.

"Well, if you're done your breakfast there, ma'am, we can mosey on out and have a look at them. I'm sort of hopin' you'll be wantin' to keep them horses, as there ain't too much call for them around here and it'd be kinda hard to sell them 'cept maybe to the dog food fact'ry." He scratched his head. "And I'll admit, I'm sorta partial to them an' I'd hate to see them go."

Shana smiled. "I won't make any promises until I see them, but I promise I'll consider it, okay?"

Breakfast over, the caretaker—whose name was Mr. Anderson—led them out the back door and along a dirt path out to a barn and a fenced-in paddock attached to it. As they approached, they all saw two horses; one a palomino mare, her coat a pretty golden color with a snow-white mane and tail; the other one, a tall rangy Appaloosa gelding with a 'snowflake' coat—dark gray flecked with spots of lighter gray with a mane and tail to match the spots. Both horses pricked up their ears at the sight of the visitors and galloped to the fence, eyes alive with curiosity.

Cam stepped forward first, murmuring something softly in Iroquois; the palomino mare took a few quick steps forward, stretched her neck in Cam's direction, then snuffled in Cam's hair. Cam giggled as the horse's whiskers tickled her neck. "Oh, Shana, she's gorgeous." She scratched Sunshine's neck, and the mare leaned into the touch with obvious delight.

As if jealous of the attention the mare was getting, the big gelding shoved his nose at Cam, who obliged by reaching out to scratch the side of his neck too. He stretched his neck out as far as it would go, inviting her to reach further along his neck until she was scratching his shoulder; then he sidled along the side of the fence until she could just barely scratch his withers with the tip of one finger; this happened to be the shoulder warped by the scar tissue, and she gave him a quiet pat before bring her arms down somewhat self-consciously. He looked somewhat disappointed but turned to Charlie, giving the big Navajo a suspicious look before allowing Charlie to scratch his neck.

Snake Eyes got a similarly effusive welcome from the two horses, then Storm stretched a neck out to Shana and sniffed her—and promptly sneezed.

"Eww!" Shana ducked out of the way, ran a short distance. "No thank you!"

Cam had to lean against the fence rail, she was laughing so hard. "He just sneezed, Shana. Likely the perfume you're wearing or something like that just ticked his nose. See? He's sorry." And indeed the hose was looking somewhat sheepish, head hanging.

Mr. Anderson finally stopped guffawing. "He's taken a shine to you folks, sure as I'm standin' here. That Mr. Kennedy, he couldn't get near 'em. They saw him comin', they'd light out for the other side of the paddock. Didn't like 'im one bit, and Storm would get in between him and Sunshine and lace his ears back like he was figurin' on givin' Kennedy a good chaw. Good thing Kennedy never got it into his head to try ridin' one. Had a crippled military guy here once, Storm went under him gentle as an old plug, but he never liked Kennedy. I finally come around to watchin' how they reacted 'round some folks and they was pretty good judges of people far's I c'n tell. Look at how they are with the young missy here." The horses were overwhelming Cam with their attentions, and she looked just as delighted to be with them.

Shana deigned to come closer and pat him. "Okay. That's enough with the horses. You said there are ATV's around here somewhere, can we take a couple and go out and look at the rest of the property?"

"We could, but you gotta decide who's goin' cause we got four ATVs and six people."

"I'll stay," Cam volunteered immediately. "Sunshine and Storm don't seem to want me to go."

"I'll stay," Mr. O'Hara raised a hand. "My bones are too old to be tearing around on those contraptions."

"What old bones?" Shana grinned wickedly at her Dad before heading off with Charlie, Snake eyes, and Mr. Anderson.

Mr. O'Hara watched Cam with the horses for a while, quietly getting the measure of the young woman to whom he owed his daughter's life. Finally, he said quietly, "That shoulder bother you?"

She turned to him, startled, and he shrugged. "Hard to tell sometimes, but when you reach up to the top of the neck it shows. Not real comfortable raising your arm that high just now, are you?"

She blushed and looked down, but her hands never faltered in patting her new friends. "The scar tissue on my back warped my shoulder joint. Shana's working with me on it, but I'm going to have to have surgery on it before I can dance again."

Mr. O'Hara scoffed as he put on a broad Irish accent. "Aye, coom now, lassie, tisn't as bad as all that. Ye still got feet and legs, d'ye not? And they still work?" She giggled at the accent.

"Well, yes, but…the arm positions for ballet—"

"Aye, well, if it's an O'Hara ye're wantin' tae be, it's Irish dancin' ye'll have tae be learnin'. None of that wavin' arms about like a tree in a storm. Straight and proud, my girl, that's how a proper Irish lass dances." He stepped over to her and took her hand, pulling her away from the horses, who whuffed in disappointment but turned and headed for the opposite side of their pasture, no doubt to discuss the new humans they'd just met.

"Now, since you are already trained in ballet, you know how to stand tall and straight, I don't need to tell you to straighten up like there's a string coming out the top of your head pulling you up to the ceiling." She nodded seriously, and his eyes twinkled as he smiled. "The first time I told Shana that she started laughing. Thought it was the funniest thing she ever heard. I could never figure out how someone as good at martial arts as she is could be so absolutely hopeless at knowing how to move feet and legs and body to music, but I guess she couldn't be good at everything." He stepped back a few paces. "Now watch me." He put both hands down at his sides and proceeded to stand straight, left foot behind him, right foot out in front and turned to the side, a small amount of grass between each foot.

"We'd call that an open fifth position in ballet," Cam said, looking at his feet intently.

"Whatever you want to call it. This is the basic position from which all dances start. The step I'm going to show you is a side step in a reel; lift your right foot up to your knee, then hop onto the other foot." He proceeded to show her. "Now, you're going to repeat what you just saw seven steps to the side." He showed her, moving with fluid grace she hadn't seen in him before…and his arms never moved. "Now lift your right foot and bend your knee…"

He showed the basic steps; the side step, jump threes, and something he called hop threes, then walked her through it himself. She, having already been trained in how to move by years of ballet, quickly got the hang of how to move even with one arm at her side and one hand on her hip (it even made her shoulder tilt less noticeable) and then he started to whistle 'Whiskey In The Jar'—a song he told her was traditional Irish music. Once she heard the tune, somehow her feet started to move of their own accord, and she felt a smile stretch her lips as she felt the familiar euphoria she associated with dancing—a feeling that she was invincible, that she could do anything, that she was free and happy and the world made sense, that it was just her and the music and her body moving almost instinctively to it.


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20: Grounds**

"The lands seem quite extensive," Shana said to Mr. Anderson as they headed for the garage that housed the ATVs.

"It ain't actually all that big, but the way the trails is laid out makes the place seem a lot bigger. There's nearly five miles of trail out there."

"Well, if I'm here, I probably won't use them much except for a morning run, maybe, so as the new owner of the place, I'll expect you to allow the local kids to continue using the trails for their activities. As long as they aren't destroying the place, tearing up the ground, vandalizing the trees and throwing trash around. If you see any of that happening you'll throw the interloper out."

"Most of these kids're pretty decent. Plus, they know they ain't supposed to be here and they take care not to leave any sign they were here. The way that there Mr. Kennedy scared that little girl went chasin' her dog scared the kids around here. If you don't mind, I'll just keep things as they are."

The ATVs roared out of the shed and out onto the dirt trail. And Mr. Anderson seemed to be right, the kids who were trespassing seemed to want to leave little sign that they'd been there; for Shana and Snake Eyes, used to seeing garbage everywhere on the ground in New York, the ground looked oddly bare—and it was nice.

Anderson stopped his ATV, and held up a hand; the others stopped too. "Looks like them kids mighta come out a bit early today, seein' as how it's Saturday an' all."

Shana turned off her ATV. "Let's go have a peek, hmm?"

The ground sloped up to a low rise, and they made their way silently through the brush to the top, as only special forces trained soldiers could, then flattened themselves along the top and peeked over.

They needn't have bothered sneaking. There was a little valley on the other side of the rise, and about four kids on BMX stunt bikes, riding up one side of the valley, doing airborne stunts and flips, and landing on the downward slope, pedaling up the slope on the other side, and doing it all again. Shana raised her eyebrows; a couple of the kids looked pretty good, to her, performing the kinds of stunts that she watched with Conrad on the base's TVs during the extreme games that he liked—skateboarders, bikers, extreme skiers, and the like. She winced as one kid lost his grip on his bike handlebars and went flying over it, hitting the ground with a dull thud; she wondered for a moment if he'd broken something but he simply got up to the accompaniment of shouts and good natured ribbing from his friends, got back on the bike, and pedaled back up the side to try the stunt again. This time he made it and his buddies cheered him.

"Yeah, I have no problem with these kids out here doing this," Shana said thoughtfully as Charlie and Mr. Anderson joined her and Snake Eyes watching the kids. "As long as they aren't doing that." She pointed, and they all looked in the direction her finger was pointing.

There was a boy there, watching the others. He was eating something, some sort of candy that was individually wrapped, and he was carelessly tossing the wrappers right and left. There wasn't much of a breeze on this sticky Atlanta day, but what little breeze there was had started finding those wrappers and begin scattering them around.

Snake Eyes slipped from Shana's side before she could say anything, and she, having a good idea where he was going and what he was going to do, motioned to the others for silence and to wait. Sure enough, a few minutes later she saw him slipping between trees and through brush and fallen leaf litter, making no more noise than a squirrel, until he was on the other side of the tree against which the boy was sitting.

With the help of a few well-placed branches, Snake Eyes shimmied up the tree, a skill honed by years of special forces training and muscles developed by a lifetime of martial arts practice. The yell the boy gave when a black-clad shadow dropped out of the tree in front of him as silently as a ghost made Shana snicker behind her hand. Snake Eyes wasn't wearing his stealth suit, or his butterfly swords, or his balaclava, but his scarred face and dark frown looked absolutely forbidding, and only someone who knew him would be able to tell he was putting in a huge effort not to laugh.

The boy stood slowly, staring, apparently frightened, and started to back away. Snake Eyes thought idly that someone really should be teaching these kids about basic self-defense; if the kid stayed with his back to the tree he'd be in a better position to defend himself.

But that wasn't what he'd done this for. He pointed to the ground in front of him, where the boy had dropped the rest of his bag of candy in his surprise at Snake eyes' sudden appearance.

"What?" The boy asked, his voice shaking a little. Snake eyes just kept pointing to the dropped candy.

"Dude, I think he wants you to pick up your trash," said another kid, standing a short distance away next to a BMX bike.

"Is that it?" The first boy said, and in answer Snake Eyes gave the second boy a warrior's acknowledgement, head bent over clasped fists. To his surprise the boy answered in kind, dropping his bike, facing him fully, then bowed, a sign of respect, as the first boy bent to start picking up the dropped candy and the scattered empty wrappers. As the other two kids bent to help, Snake Eyes melted away into the underbrush, exiting unnoticed; when the boys straightened up, the clearing was empty except for them.

Snake Eyes rejoined Shana, Charlie, and Mr. Anderson, grinning. "You know, I think you enjoyed that a little too much," Shana teased as they all backtracked to where they'd left the ATVs. "Maybe after we muster out someday we open a school?"

Snake Eyes thought about it. One of the things he liked about Joe base was training recruits; how different could training a bunch of inner city kids be? _Maybe,_ he finally signed as they continued on their tour of the four acres. Live here, open a school, teach inner-city kids? The idea had merits.

Three of the four acres were wooded/forested, with about five miles of trail running through it. In the northeast corner of the property, however, there was a huge pond, almost a small lake. Shana exclaimed in delight as she parked her ATV and went to the edge. "How deep is it?" she looked down, saw the small silvery shapes darting just under the surface. "Oh, hey! Fish!"

"Them banker types fancied a spot of fishin' while they was here, so they stocked the pond with some game fish. Don't rightly know what kind, but there is fish here..." and as if on cue, out towards the middle of the pond something silver flashed, spreading ripples across the quiet surface. "It's a natural lake, and there was some talk about bringin' jet skis or something like that, but it never happened. There's a couple of kayaks in the boathouse on the other side, and a small motorboat, but nothing real fancy or complicated. Now, there's some people come fish out here sometimes, which I kinda let go on because them bankers didn't come out here that often and most the time they caught and released—very few'a them kept what they caught and ate it…so I let a little fishin' happen on the sly cause the population needs to thin a little now an' then."

"Sounds like a good idea," Shana said. "In fact, I don't see anything that you're doing right now that I want to change. If you're up to the idea, we'll continue the status quo. What are you getting paid, and how are you getting it?"

"Them bankers set up a repeatin' deposit each month. I'll show you some statements when I come back. They didn't pay me much, but I didn't ask for much either; I got my own landscapin' business, and this is just a sideline for me. And my daughter –she's near sixteen and been ridin' since she was six—loves comin' up to feed the horses and clean out the stalls. She's got one of her own, but the mare's in a boardin' stable a couple miles away and she don't get to see her often."

"Tell you what. From what I saw, that stable has plenty of room—if this property's closer, I don't see why your daughter couldn't keep her horse here. Storm and Sunshine have to be lonely, they might welcome some company. Let's get back to the stable; I'll take a look."

"That's mighty gen'rous of you, ma'am…"

"It's practical," Shana insisted, waving off his words. "Both Snake Eyes and I are in the military; we won't be here for more than a few weeks out of the year. If the stable is empty except for the two horses, there's no reason why you can't bring yours if there's room; you take care of the property, right?"

"An' when them bankers call and says they're expectin' guests my wife and daughter come and give the place a bit of cleanin' so's the place is spruced up."

They were reaching the place where the trail doubled back to the yard when Shana held up a hand. Clearly, in the still morning air they heard someone whistling an Irish reel, broken by an occasional "No, the other foot…yes, there you go…" and the whistling would resume.

Shana turned off the ATV and parked it, and followed the path until it opened up by the paddock. And there, in front of the barn, Shana's father was clapping his hands in time to the whistled tune of 'Whiskey In The Jar' and Cam was dancing.

They hadn't seen Cam dancing since before they'd left on the Congo mission. Her face was flushed, she was breathing hard, but she was also smiling as her feet moved in time with the tune.

"I never thought of that," Shana breathed. "I never thought…Irish dancing doesn't require the use of arms, not like her ballet does. I never thought she'd be just as happy doing jigs and reels as she would doing her ballet!"

And just then Cam caught sight of them and stopped, face flushed, sweaty but happy. "So how did it go?" she called as she waved.

Shan shook herself out of her musing. "Great!" she answered back. "Let's get the ATVs back in the shed and I'll tell you all about it." She turned away, headed for the ATVs, and only Snake Eyes saw the tears in her eyes at seeing her friend happy.

But she was in full control of herself by the time they joined her father and Cam. "Let's walk. I want to take a look at the barn; Mr. Anderson's daughter has a horse of her own, but she's in a boarding stable some distance away, and since he's taking care of the land and grounds I don't see why he can't bring his daughter's horse here instead of the boarding stable."

"That's a wonderful idea! Storm and Sunshine have to be lonely here, with just the two of them all the time—having company for them would be great!"

There were six stalls in the barn; one was being used as storage for tack, but three stalls were empty. Shana turned to Mr. Anderson. "It's settled then. Bring your daughter's horse here; she's welcome to stay. In fact, let's go inside where we can talk; I have a proposition for you."

She told them about the property as she sketched out a map of the grounds for Cam and her father's benefit, describing Snake Eyes' little adventure with the children in excruciating detail for the benefit of her father and Cam, who both laughed at the image of the boy terrified of Snake Eyes. Cam's laughter was infectious, and soon they were all laughing.

Mr. Anderson wiped his eyes. "Them kids is never gonna to forget that. I guarantee I ain't never going to find no speck of garbage out there from here on out."

"And that's what I wanted to talk to you about. Snake Eyes and I are in the military, so we're not around much. And we also have a home—a cabin in the California mountains, so the only time we're going to be here is when we're visiting family. But there's a lot of history here, and the grounds are beautiful, and there's a lot to offer. So I want to make a proposition for you." She leaned an elbow on the table, tapping a spot on the map of the property she'd drawn on the napkin. "The pond in the northwest corner—I saw a little cabin there by the boathouse. Do you know what that was?"

"That used t'be the caretaker's cabin. Little tiny place—got two rooms, kitchen, bath, attic space."

Shana smiled. "Good. I'm going to have that cabin fixed up for our use while we're here—Snake Eyes and myself. Now, I looked at the layout of the house here and I noticed there is a small suite here on the lower floor; sitting room, two bedrooms, private kitchen and bath—it occurred to me that perhaps you, your wife, and daughter would like to move in here." He started to say something, but she held up a hand. "Wait. Let me explain. I don't mean to stay here at the house, but it has too much history and beauty and too much to offer to keep private. I propose to have it listed as a historic place on the state register—"

"It is already," Anderson said.

"—good, then I don't have to do that. Now. I want to open it as a bed and breakfast. I will still own the place, but you and your wife are welcome to manage it as you see fit; rent rooms to whoever you like, your daughter can have a job as the stable manager, buy a couple more horses and open a summer riding camp for the local kids, I'll leave that up to you. People can fish in the pond, kids can ride their bikes on the trails—it'll be semi-public, although I recommend you post some kind of schedule where horses and dirt bikes have the trails on alternate days, just so no one crashes into a horse and hurts it or themselves. The cabin at the lake is ours, that will be off limits, and I will be upset if it is used or disturbed in any way. That, by the way, includes you—I don't want your wife coming and cleaning the place and airing it out, okay? I can absolutely do my own cleaning—Dad didn't raise bums." Her words were sharp, but her eyes twinkled merrily so Anderson knew she was joking. "Hire a cook and housekeeper if you like, a stablehand to help your daughter. I'm going to open an account for you at the local bank with $50k as startup capital, hire and buy what you need. When you start getting guests in I'd like a twenty percent share of the profits, and the rest you can use as you see fit."

Anderson looked like he'd been pole-axed. "That's….mighty generous of you, Miz O'Hara," he got out finally. "I don't know what to say."

"Yes would be a good place to start," Shana said with a chuckle.

"Well…yes, but…twenty percent?"

"I may change that to ten percent later once the initial $50 grand startup capital is paid back, Mr. Anderson, but yes, twenty percent for now. I'll need that twenty percent profit to keep up with the property taxes on it. You'll have your hands full dealing with guests as it is, so let me worry about the taxes." She saw his face. "What's wrong?"

"Uh…I was sort of expecting a fifty-fifty split…don't…don't you want that for yourself?"

Shana shook her head. "Mr. Anderson, I'm a Master Sergeant with a classified military project. So is Snake Eyes. I really don't need the money. I'm not greedy. The little lake cabin is just what I need while I'm here visiting family, and besides, Snake Eyes and I have a cabin in California, in the Sierra Nevadas, and I'll admit I've become very partial to low humidity and mountain snow." She added as an afterthought, "And a house that isn't haunted."

"You met the ghost?" Mr. Anderson leaned forward eagerly.

"You know about…of course you do, you're the caretaker." Shana smacked her forehead.

Anderson grinned. "Yep, I know about the ghost. Found out when I came in the barn one morning and Storm was having his tail brushed with no one holding the brush that I could see."

"So it's a friendly ghost?"

"She ain't never harmed nothin' 'round here 'cept maybe a coupla broken glasses or something to get your attention. That there Kennedy said he didn't believe in ghosts an' it was nonsense, but I had a ghost-huntin' friend a mine come in an' he said the place was definitely haunted. Had a little recorder thing and it had the voice of a little girl on it who said her name was Sarah. My daughter got interested, looked up stuff at the local library, said there was a little homeless girl named Sarah Campbell round about ten, maybe twelve years ago went missin', never found, case's still unsolved, she thinks it's this Sarah what's hauntin' the place since the stories started 'bout the same time's this girl disappeared. Sarah really hates Mr. Kennedy—stuff in his room went flying around like a tornado was in it, there was broken glass in his bed an' he even had to go to the hospital one day cause there was broken glass in his shoes one mornin', stuff like that. Got to where even though he said it was nonsense and he didn't believe in ghosts, he wouldn't stay here overnight no more startin 'bout eight years ago. He'd get a hotel room in the city on his own nickel 'stead of stayin' here."

"After what Kennedy did to us…do you think maybe Kennedy had something to do with her disappearance? Could he have killed her?" Cam stared at Shana.

"I guess anything's possible. I don't see there's any way we'll ever know for certain, but at least we know it's not an evil ghost unless you're Damien Kennedy."


	21. Chapter 21: Cooking Lessons

**Chapter 21: Cooking Lessons**

With firm plans established to what they were going to do with the place, the next task was to get the small lakeside cabin fixed up. Although Shana said it wouldn't disrupt anything if the Anderson family moved in while they were upstairs, Mr. Anderson firmly averred that it wasn't right and he would wait until Shana was out before moving in.

Mr. O'Hara took all of them into the city that morning. While Shana arranged for fifty grand of the money she'd received as restitution to be deposited into the account meant for Mr. Anderson to use to hire help and keep and maintain the bed and breakfast, Snake Eyes, Charlie, and Cam went shopping for things to stock the refrigerator.

Cam had had the three million in restitution placed in a separate account with a bank who had a branch in Gowanda, the closest town to where Charlie's parents would be building a house. She'd called Jennifer and informed her of what she'd done, why she'd done it, and asked Jennifer since she and Andy Lightfeather knew where the cabin was, could they take everything out of the basement of the cabin, throw it away or burn it, and make sure it was empty and Charlie's parents would know nothing about the history of the place and no indications that it had been a young girl's prison for three years. Jennifer had promised her it would get done.

The ten grand Allie and Conrad brought back for inserting her into the Amsterdam market had been added to her accounts, and while she refused to think about where it had come from and what she'd had to do to get it, she had no problem with spending it. It was blood money, and it was hers, fair and square.

She did some shopping while she was in Atlanta; she'd never been here before, and everything was new and different. Charlie shook his head when he saw her buying a wooden pen holder with a nice brass pen in it—and having 'General Abernathy' engraved on the side; a soft, cute little sock-monkey puppet for Liv; a genuine leather portfolio with brass corners for Alex's legal papers, a rose-satin floor-length nightgown for Allie that was embroidered with oriental designs and patterns in red and gold thread. Charlie urged her to spend some money on herself, and in a cutlery store she finally bought herself a new twin-blade baton with ebony handles and steel/silver fittings on the hilt. The only other money she spent on herself was to purchase one of the new electronic book readers onto which she could load books. Charlie then bought her a hundred-dollar gift card for her to buy the books she wanted; Snake Eyes bought her another one, from himself and Shana.

They got back to the house later that afternoon, and Shana tried to shoo the men out of the kitchen. "Out, both of you. Cam and I are going to cook tonight."

Snake Eyes grinned. Charlie groaned and covered his eyes.

"What?" Shana faced both of them, hands on her hips. "Think just because we're soldiers we can't cook? We cooked a couple of times on the Congo trip and you ate it!"

Charlie shook his head. "It's not that. Cam's great at field prep of scrounged food, great at field dressing and cooking of food she hunted herself, but for some reason she's completely hopeless in the kitchen."

"She's not hopeless. She's just never had someone show her how. Did you bother giving her lessons?"

Charlie nodded, trying to keep a straight face and failing. "I did. And it didn't help. Cam can't cook in a kitchen. Kitchens just don't like her."

"Then you didn't try hard enough or you didn't teach her right. I'll give her cooking lessons tonight. You go—do whatever."

"You can try," Charlie grinned as he and Snake Eyes escaped into the rec room, where Charlie promptly raided the small refrigerator for a couple of beers, handing one to Snake Eyes. "Sit back and listen to the show."

They turned the TV on, but it was hard to ignore the sounds coming from the kitchen. "No, no, not like that, Cam, like this. You have to rub the meat gently." Quiet mutters for a moment, then Shana spoke again. "Here, time to tenderize the roast. No, no, Cam, not like that! You don't want to beat the meat!"

Charlie thought his sides were going to burst. Snake Eyes' face was flushed red and he looked like he couldn't even get in a breath. Charlie fought down the sound of his laughter—he certainly wouldn't have missed this for the world. It was something he couldn't wait to tell Frank at base—Frank would never let Cam live it down.

"No, the nuts are the best part. Here, take a couple of those and slip them under the meat. Yes, I know it looks funny but believe me, you'll appreciate the results."

Charlie couldn't sit upright anymore. He sagged against Snake Eyes, face red, desperately trying to hold in the sound of his laughter. Snake Eyes didn't even have to try and keep his laughter silent, but there were tears of merriment streaming from his eyes.

"Cam I don't understand how you can be so good at field prepping and hopeless in the kitchen. Here, go boil these eggs so we can sprinkle some chopped egg on top of the salad. You can't possibly mess that up." A moment of silence. "No, just enough to cover them. You don't have to drown them." Then, "Grab that knife and chop up the carrots and cucumbers for the salad. Oh, and remember—it's a great way to blow off steam if you're ever mad at Charlie—chopping vegetables."

A choked giggle escaped Charlie's lips; fortunately drowned out by Cam's explosion of laughter from inside the kitchen. The rest of the meal prep went in much the same way, and when Charlie and Snake Eyes came into the kitchen, poker-faced, to sit in the breakfast nook for dinner, Shana was looking puzzled—and, by the looks of the bottle of whiskey sitting on the table, on her way to being drunk.

"I don't understand it," Shana said as she sat at the table, staring at her glass. "She's great with a sword and she can cook out in the field, but she can't cook in a kitchen."

Any comment on that might have gotten Charlie smacked by Cam, glaring at him across the table, so he looked around quickly for something to focus on and saw a bowl with a couple of eggs in it, When he picked one up it was heavy, so he figured these were the eggs that Cam had boiled, and he pressed a finger against a shell to peel it even as Shana looked up and yelped, "Don't! Those aren't—"

Bright yellow egg yolk fountained up from the collapsed center of the egg; the whites had cooked, but the yolk was still raw. Charlie quickly stood over the sink and ran water over his hands as Shana shook her head at the bowl. "I told her to boil the eggs. Really simple. Put eggs in pot, put water in pot, turn on heat until water boils and boil for three minutes, and turn off heat then let stand in cold water before peeling." She hiccupped. "It should have worked. But you saw the result. I even tried boiling a couple on my own using the same instructions I gave her. They came out perfect." She indicated a bowl of boiled chopped egg on the table ready to be sprinkled on a salad. "I don't know what went wrong."

"I told you she couldn't cook," Charlie admonished as he dried his hands in the kitchen towel. "Cam is a wonderful woman, she's talented at a great many things, but cooking is not one of them. " His warm smile at his wife took the sting out of his words. "That's okay. I didn't marry her for her domestic skills."

Snake Eyes grinned. _No, she married you because you have nuts under the meat._ Both he and Charlie burst into laughter.

Shana and Cam looked at each other, puzzled, then shrugged. "Males," Shana said finally, rolling her eyes. "Can't figure them out sometimes. Come on, let's eat." And they all sat down to a dinner of beef roast prepared with herbs and nuts, salad, and steamed asparagus.

The next day Shana, Mr. O'Hara, Mr. Anderson, and Snake Eyes went out to the lakeside cabin to look at it; Charlie and Cam opted to take the horses, who didn't seem to have a problem with the noisy ATV's, and they all met by the lake. Cam was entranced with the tiny silver fingerlings darting through the shallows, and the beauty and peace of the scene appealed to Snake eyes immediately.

The cabin was just that; a cabin. One floor, a sitting room in front, a kitchen/dining room in the back, a short hallway past a bathroom with two rooms on either side, rooms just large enough for a queen bed and a dresser. "It has definite potential," Shana said finally, "but it needs to be expanded. The rooms need to be bigger, I want a separate dining room, and the bathroom needs to be upgraded. But there's good foundation here, and it's not hopeless."

"It's really lovely. I wouldn't have two rooms expanded, Shana, why not just knock out a wall between the two bedrooms and make it one large one?"

"Because Snake Eyes and I, although we love the two of you, don't want to share a bedroom with you. The noises the two of you make…"

"Shana!" Mr. O'Hara sounded shocked, but Shana just shrugged.

"Come on, Dad, I know how I got here. And Brian and Frank and Sean and even Siobhan. And if I ever have kids you'll know exactly where they came from too." Shana grinned at him and kissed his cheek affectionately, then looked at Cam's shocked face. "What?"

"You…said…"

"Yes, I know what I said, and I meant it too. This place is as much yours as it is mine, you'll be using it and living here when you're on furlough and visiting family—because you are family. And Dad will love being able to give you dancing lessons."

"I'm going to love getting them. It's a completely new discipline, it's simpler and less strenuous than ballet but it's kinda more fun." She grinned. "So this is going to be our home as well as yours?"

"Absolutely. We're not always going to get to go on leave together, this time was only because we got married at the same time so next time you're going to get to decide where you want to go, and not just wait for me and Snake Eyes to decide where we all go."

They were on their way back to the main house along the paths when Shana spotted something in the underbrush and stopped, going over to investigate. There had been a bad storm the night before, though they'd all barely noticed it, being busy with other things, but the wind and rain had blown over a tree and taken a huge tangle of kudzu vines over along with it and something caught Shana's eye. Something urged her to investigate; some inner prompting she couldn't name, couldn't place, but obeyed nevertheless.

She reached for the thing that had caught her eye; something red, shiny; it stood out against the dark brown and black leaf litter and soil of the Georgia forest, and after a little digging she managed to unearth the object.

A little girl's shoe.

A little red slip-on with an elastic strap over it, like Cam's ballet slippers, but this was a regular shoe with a hard sole, and it was covered over with red sequins like Dorothy's ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. One of those cheap mass-produced items that cropped up in supercenter general stores everywhere but that enchanted a little girl who watched the old movie.

"This has been buried in the dirt a while," Shana said as Cam, Charlie, Snake Eyes, Mr. Anderson, and Mr. O'Hara walked up to her. The horses stood placidly chewing their bits, not seeming to be really concerned at all, and in fact Cam and Charlie forgot about them altogether as they leaned over the shoe.

"We're miles away from the roads, and few kids come this way anyway, the branches are too low to ride bikes. So I wonder how this got here?" Anderson wondered, but Cam and Shana were already looking at each other, the same realization in their eyes, and then Cam and Charlie started grabbing handfuls of vine and branches and brush, laying bare the soil that had been covered for years.

Once they had a good five square feet of ground uncovered they set to work, digging through the top layers of dirt. A foot down. Then two. And suddenly there was a brilliant flash of red sequins through grime and dirt.

They pulled the other shoe out and laid it on the ground next to the other one, and Mr Anderson and Mr. O'Hara stared at it. "You don't think that missin' Sarah's buried here, do you?" Mr. Anderson said slowly.

"I can't ignore the possibility," Shana said grimly. "How old was she when she went missing?"

"About thirteen, I think I heard," Mr. Anderson said.

"The size inside the shoe says it's a two," Cam said, pointing to gold lettering stamped inside the shoe. "A thirteen year old could be wearing a shoe that size." She knelt and started to dig again, grimly, silently.

Mr. Anderson wiped his brow. "I can't believe someone woulda killed that little girl and buried her here. No wonder no one ever found the body, Mr. Kennedy was that strict on not lettin' nobody on the property—"

Just then a strangled sound came from Shana, standing at the bottom of a three foot hole, and both Mr. Anderson and Mr. O'Hara looked down. She was holding the tattered remains of a little blue dress, a white and blue checked gingham such as a little girl might have worn if playing dress up as Dorothy. And in the dirt under her, having fallen out of the dress, was a long white bone.

"I'm goin' to call the police!" Mr. Anderson whipped out his cell phone.

It was somewhat more complicated than that; they were far into the woods, and not near a road, one of the most isolated spots on the entire plantation. Mr. Anderson finally got on one of the ATV's and went to meet the police at the closest road, then led them back.

Despite the temptation to keep digging until they found the whole body, Charlie, Cam, Snake Eyes, and Shana climbed out of the hole and wisely waited until the police got there, then moved the ATV's and the horses back for a police jeep to come down the path. By the time the medical examiners and forensics teams were dispatched, Mr. Anderson figured out the best way to get the large coroner's van and other police equipment into the area, and Shana gave permission for a couple of the firemen ground crews to use axes on some of the smaller trees to clear a path to what was now obviously the burial site of a little girl.

One by one the bones started coming out. The long bone that Shana had found was the first one out, laid on a stretcher beside the two red shoes and the tattered bit of dress; then another long bone, which the medical examiner indicated was a thigh bone; two shorter, thinner bones from the lower leg. A ribcage, with several of the tiny, thin bones broken and crushed; a spine, an upper arm, a lower arm with two bones; several people came out with what looked like large pasta colanders to Shana, and started sifting through shovelfuls of dirt. This yielded a handful of bones that the ME grimly declared were finger bones, and were laid on the stretcher in the approximate positions where they would be if the body had still been whole.

By the time the shadows grew long and they had to stop because the light was fading, they had what looked definitely like most of a skeleton; both legs, complete; ankle bones, kneecaps, even some of the tiny foot and toe bones. Pelvis, intact; spine, intact; ribcage, with several of the fragile ribs crushed, one upper arm, one lower arm.

What they hadn't found yet, and what everyone had been looking for, was a skull. None had yet been found, and the ME had been examining the end of the spine where the head would have joined the neck, and finally as they wrapped up for the day and the techs spread tarps over the whole scene to preserve it from rain or insects until they could excavate more the following day, the ME joined them. "We'll wrap this up tomorrow. There's only a few more bones to find, and we're not going to find the skull. I looked at the neck, there are kerf marks—places where it looks like a saw was used to cut the head from the body."

Mr. O'Hara winced and looked green.

"Are you sure?" Shana frowned. "You can tell?"

"I'm pretty sure the head won't be here. Sometimes a killer will keep parts of his victims as souvenirs, and I'm thinking this would be the case here. Thank you for keeping a sharp eye out and spotting that first shoe; now maybe if you can keep an eye out for the skull, we might be able to solve the case."


	22. Chapter 22: Discovery

**Chapter 22: Discovery**

It was late, but no one felt like sleeping. Everyone was thinking about the little girl whose body had been buried out in the middle of the woods alone and her head…who knew where.

"I wonder if she was killed inside, or if her killer marched her outside and killed her there. Did he make it quick, or did she suffer? How did she die? Did she know she was going to be killed?" Shana sat on one end of the couch in the rec room, tossing back mouthful after mouthful of beer…and staying completely sober.

"Who killed her? Was it Kennedy? I wish we knew," Cam said quietly, nursing a beer but hardly even sipping it. "Is this little girl's ghost that we've seen here the girl to whom that body belonged? Is it possible that that could be the reason she still hangs around here, why she breaks glass? Is she trying to get someone's attention, to let them know where she's buried so she can finally be at peace?"

As if in response, there was a crash—from downstairs. The wine cellar, where they'd heard all the breaking bottles the first night. They all looked at each other in consternation.

"She's trying to get our attention," Cam said slowly. "I think maybe we should go down and see if maybe we can communicate with her, give us a clue to how to help her. I'd hate to think she's stuck here because her body's not properly laid to rest. Maybe we can give that to her."

"Wait here," Shana said as she got up and left the room, and a short time later she came back—wearing a little gold cross on a thin gold chain around her neck. Cam reached inside her shirt for the military-issue pentagram hanging on the bead chain next to her dog tags, and together the four of them went down to the basement.

Again there was a bottle of wine dropped and shattered on the floor, but this time instead of just cleaning it up right away, they all sat on the bottom step of the stairs. "All right," Shana said slowly to the empty air. "You have our attention. Now, who are you, and what are you doing here?" She said it lightly, conversationally.

The surface of the puddle of wine stirred, and suddenly a little trail of it started to separate from the main puddle. Like someone sticking a finger in it and trying to write in the spilled fluid. It took long minutes before they were finally able to read the spidery letters. "Sarah," Shana breathed. "You're Sarah. You're the little girl who went missing that no one ever found."

A piece of glass from the bottle lifted up off the floor a few inches and then dropped back again. A yes? Or a no? Shana crossed the basement floor, picked up the piece of glass—a nearly-complete thick circle from the bottom of the bottle—and moved it close to where they sat. "Move that piece of glass for yes, okay?"

The glass rose, hovered a few inches above the floor for a second, then dropped back to the floor—not hard enough to break it.

"Did Damien Kennedy kill you?" Cam asked quietly. The glass rose up off the floor almost immediately, then fell back with a tinkle. "Did he…hurt you…before he killed you?"

The glass rose, hovered, fell.

"We guessed that was what happened," Shana said quietly. "I'm sorry, Sarah. I know this is going to be poor consolation, but he is dead. We, Cam and I were victims too." And she quietly commenced telling the unseen ghost what had happened to them…and the results of the trial, and finding him dead. When she finally finished and the basement was momentarily quiet, a gust of chilly air blew around them, lifting a few strands of their hair with its passing.

"Is that your body out there that we found this afternoon?" The glass rose, hovered, dropped. "The Medical Examiner said that your…head…isn't with the body. Sweetheart, I'm so sorry this happened to you, and if there is any way that you can tell us where your head is, so we can give you a proper burial and help you move on, please let us know."

The puddle of spilled wine, which was now sending up a full, fruity scent throughout the basement, rippled as if it were being touched. Charlie gasped audibly as they watched the puddle of wine compress in the middle, in the shape of two small hands, and then the ghostly hands, covered in wine, went to the opposite wall of the basement and pressed two handprints against a section of the wall.

Shana got up, went to that portion of the wall. "It feels solid," she muttered, tapped against it, listening for unevenness in tone. Outwardly it looked like the same drywall-covered masonry as the rest of the basement, but when she dug at the wall beside the handprints with a fingernail, the chips that fell from under her nails were plaster.

Cam was on her feet like a shot. "There was something else there that was plastered over!"

Shana ran upstairs, coming back down with one of the large kitchen knives; Charlie and Cam grabbed screwdrivers and Snake Eyes grabbed a bottle opener, with its triangular curved tip, and they all dug at the wall. It was indeed plaster, layered over top of brick to make that section of the wall sound the same as the other sections. Bu there was no mortar between the brick, it had been laid by an inexpert hand, and when they started pulling bricks off the stack the whole badly-built brick wall crumbled, revealing a sheet of plywood. This was screwed in, and when Charlie used the screwdriver in his hand to unscrew the screws, they found a plain white wooden interior door on the other side. They all stood there looking at it for a moment, then Shana took a deep breath and opened it.

The stench of decaying rotting flesh made them gag, but what brought tears to all of their eyes was the tangle of by-now-familiar paraphernalia—whips, straps, restraints, and, in the middle of the pile, a small skull, mostly white since the process of decomposition, even in this closed-off room, had melted skin and fat from the skull, but the few shreds of what had once been hair still clung stubbornly to the skull.

"Oh God," Shana whispered.

"I'll examine it when I get to the lab, but I'm pretty sure it's her skull," the forensic anthropologist—who reminded them of Temperance Brennan—said as she picked up the head and placed it into a plastic evidence bag. "The kerf marks look like the same. Thank you, first for finding the body, and then for finding the rest of her. It's strange—it's been nearly ten years, and I would almost suspect you of having known where she was buried but that's impossible—you have never been to this property before."

"It's…we had a little help." Shana hesitated for a moment, then shrugged internally. "The place is haunted by a ghost; we managed to…communicate…and she told us where she was." Shana picked up a piece of plaster, which they'd carefully chipped around, that had the two child's handprints in spilled wine.

"We heard rumors the place was haunted from the banker that owned it, but we never once thought it might be the little girl everyone was looking for. In fact, when we heard about Damien Kennedy's trial, I still don't think it even occurred to anyone here to think she might have become a victim of the madman." The woman's face looked sad. "The thought of a child enduring some of the things talked about at the trial…it's unthinkable."

"Does Sarah still have any family left to bury her?" Cam said quietly. "If they don't I'll pay for her burial."

The woman looked at her startled, then tears filled her eyes. "You two are really connected to this little girl, aren't you? Knowing what she suffered and all."

"Yes," Cam said simply. Shana just nodded.

"I'll let you know as soon as we know something concrete. I think there might be a cousin left,

though she doesn't live around here."

"I appreciate that," Shana said, and the woman left.

They were all very, very quiet as they went upstairs, and Shana was quiet as she undressed and got into bed with Snake Eyes. There was no foreplay that night, she seemed disinclined to want to play, so he just held her, cuddled her, until his eyes closed. He felt her slide out of bed soon after, but moments later he heard Cam's low voice out in the hallway, and decided to stay in bed. If the girls wanted to have some girl talk together after what had happened that day, the last thing they would want was men horning in—even if it was the men they'd married.

Shana met Cam in the hallway. "Couldn't sleep either?" Cam shook her head. "Come on. Now that we've found Sarah's body, she can be at peace and we can get roaringly drunk. Without the guys." Cam nodded, and they settled down in the rec room with beers.

"I can't imagine what she went through," Shana finally said, an hour and four beers later. "Being that young, and in that much pain—Dear God, I hope Kennedy made it quick, and that she didn't suffer. Cutting off her head…I hope she wasn't alive when he did it."

"I can imagine. I know. I was there. With my aunt and uncle."

Shana reached out, took Cam's hand, held it close. "I forgot that. And I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry, Cam. I wish there was a way to make everyone who ever hurt you pay for what they've done."

"And you," Cam said. "There…is a way. Sort of. I've been thinking about it."

"How would you do that?"

Cam tried to explain. "The majority of the people out there in the world who are Christians would consider this as 'placing a curse' on the person who hurt you. It's actually not that specific, it's more along the lines of asking the Great Spirit to grant you justice, or the Goddess to make sure that someone who hurts an innocent gets back what they gave. It's more just asking for justice than it is placing a curse, but the understanding there is that if you deserved what happened to you, that is justice—and if you're being spiteful and vengeful and ask for 'justice' out of an impure reason, then that will rebound on you."

"That's…a really interesting idea." Shana pondered that. "So how do you do that? A spell or something?"

"A spell is simply focused prayer, Shana. It's not like you see on TV with robes and chanting and stuff like that. It's just meditating, and concentration, and just asking the Goddess-or the Great Spirit that Charlie believes in—to even out the cosmic balance."

"Um, can I…watch?"

A hint of laughter. "Of course you can. Not that there's much to see." Cam sat down cross-legged on the floor and closed her eyes. Shana waited. And waited. And waited.

Just as she was about to say "Cam, are you sure this is working?" the hair on the back of her neck prickled, stood up. In the middle of the room a sort of wispy white fog gathered, in the vague shape of a person. A short person. And then a face swam out of that mist, and then the rest of the mist coalesced, and Shana saw a little girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, with short brown curls. "Sarah?" she breathed.

The little girl nodded, smiled. She was short, maybe about four and a half feet, wearing a tee shirt and shorts and sneakers, and had an impish grin with a hint of freckles across her nose. Her lips moved, and although ho sound came out, Shana could still hear the little girl's words in her mind. :Thank you for finding me.:

"You're welcome," Shana said aloud, quietly. "I'm sorry for what happened to you. Cam and I will make sure you get a decent burial."

The girl's smile got a little wider. :Thank you. Although I don't think I'll leave just yet. I can see the light, but I don't want to go yet. I sort of like it here. And Sunshine and Storm like me. I go out and play with them when there's no one here to ride them.:

"Well, I'm planning on turning this place into a bed and breakfast—I'm not planning to live here."

The little girl laughed, a silvery whisper of sound. :I used to love ghost stories when I was alive. I'd tell my Mom that when I was dead I'd come back as a ghost and find a lovely old house to haunt and just have fun scaring people. Your sister—now she will be fun to scare if she ever comes back.:

Shana threw back her head and laughed. "Maybe I should patch things up with her and invite her back. It would almost be worth it just to freak her out." She thought. "And I do need a lawyer to handle legal stuff about the place, so maybe I should." A sudden thought occurred to her. "Oh, I'm having Mr. Anderson and his wife and daughter move in to run the place and take care of it, so if you're going to stick around, you're going to have to get along with them."

:I can do that.: The ghost's voice sounded slightly wistful. :I can sort of pretend she's my mom. I miss having a mom.:

Shana felt a sudden surge of sympathy. "What happened?"

:Mom died of cancer, and after she was gone Dad started drinking. He didn't care where I went, what I did, whether I was in school or not, and when we were evicted because he drank rather than pay the rent, we went out on the street because there was nowhere else to go. I was hungry one evening standing outside a bakery looking at the doughnuts when Mr. Kennedy came out and saw me. He offered to buy me one, then he brought me here and said he was going to give me dinner. I think he put some kind of drug in it and when I woke up I was tied up and he…did things…to me. You know.:

Yes, Shana knew.

:He walked me out to the corner of the property, made me dig a hole and lie down in it and then he cut my throat. It was really quick, I felt pain in my neck, and then suddenly I was floating over my own body. I couldn't bear to watch him cutting off my head, but I felt myself drawn here and I knew where he put it—in the basement closet that he boarded up and walled in. I'm sorry for scaring you with the wine bottles, I didn't know how else to get your attention. I tried not to break anything that looked really expensive.:

"It's okay," Shana said quietly. "I'm glad you did, if it helped. So, if you're going to stick around, can I advertise this place as a haunted bed and breakfast?"

Another laugh. :As long as you don't try to exorcise me.:

"Done." Shana said instantly. "We might actually get more visitors if you stick around than if you don't. Ghosts are really popular and we could do quite a business renting rooms for the night to paranormal research teams."

:Think I could be on TV?: the little girl's grin got wider, and Shana smiled back even as her heart ached. Too young. Sarah's life had been cut short, too young and too soon. It was one thing for Shana herself, captured as an adult with an adult's ability to reason and think; it had been different for Cam, fifteen and at the mercy of the adults around her. But even for her there'd been a measure of safety, because her Aunt and Uncle had made money from her, they couldn't kill her without taking a pay cut. Sarah, though…alone, friendless, invisible, no one who knew or cared, might as well have been an orphan for all the attention her father paid her, and having lost a mother… "I'll talk to Mr. Anderson's wife, let her know that you're here and she should just treat you like a daughter. Course, that means you'll have to clean rooms and no breaking any more dishes!"

Her silvery laugh was the last thing Shana heard as she faded out of sight, mist dissipating until there was nothing in the room. Shana stretched out on the couch waiting for Cam to come out of her meditative trance…

She opened her eyes as a hand touched her shoulder. She blinked blearily at Snake Eyes, who simply scooped her up in his arms and carried her off to bed.


	23. Chapter 23: Scare

**Chapter 23: Scare**

"Shana?"

Shana forced herself to keep her voice light and pleasant over the phone. "Hello, Siobhan."

The lack of negative emotions in her voice must have taken Siobhan by surprise, because Siobhan sounded wary and puzzled when she said, "I wasn't expecting to hear from you."

"I know you weren't. I'm not going to discuss it, Siobhan. What's done is done. What I called you about is this property I own. I want to turn it into a little historic bed and breakfast and I need some legal advice on how to get it started to its best advantage." Shana crossed her fingers and hoped her sister would forget that Shana had a law degree and had practiced for a brief time before going into the military. "There's a caretaker's cottage at the lake in the northwest corner of the property, that's all I need as far as a place to stay while I'm here visiting family. The manor house is certainly large enough to turn into a bed and breakfast inn. I called to ask you if you'd like to come by and have a look, maybe give me some advice." She hoped she didn't sound too eager.

She didn't dare turn around. Behind her, the glasses on the table at the breakfast nook were rattling slightly as Snake Eyes, Cam, and Charlie tried desperately to stifle their laughter. If she looked at them, she'd start laughing too, and that would ruin her—their—plans. And Sarah's.

When she'd woken up that morning, eyes watery and a slight headache from the alcohol she'd drunk the night before (her tolerance had slipped in the last few months and she was going to have to put in some serious work into bringing it back up, not that she was complaining a bit) she'd immediately briefed Cam, Charlie, and Snake Eyes on what she'd learned from Sarah. She hadn't, however, mentioned anything to Snake Eyes or Charlie about hers and Cam's talk the night before, or what Cam had done—she wasn't sure either of them would understand, much less approve, and since Cam herself didn't broach the subject, Shana decided she wouldn't either.

She did tell them about her 'conversation' with Sarah, and although she saw skepticism in Snake Eyes' eyes, his only comment had been, _We'll see what the coroner finds out about the way she died._ That was, after all, not something that Shana would be able to know unless Sarah herself had told her, and Shana was certain the coroner would find out that this indeed was how Sarah had died. In the meantime, he was willing to go along with her assertion that she had spoken to the little girl, and even find some humor—and agree to Shana's plan—to bring Siobhan here so Sarah could scare Shana's snobby big sister. However, she didn't know what their Dad would think if he heard about this, so when he dropped in to say a quick 'hi' on his way to work, she'd said nothing about their plans, assured him they'd spent a peaceful night and the discovery of the body hadn't disturbed their sleep, and sent him off with a kiss and a cheerful wave.

And then had called Siobhan.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," Siobhan said, and Shana barely hung the phone up before she started chuckling maliciously.

"She says she'll be here in twenty minutes. I'll bet she's going to be here in fifteen," she giggled as she took a sip of her coffee; the caffeine seemed to be having a good effect on her alcohol headache—she wasn't even going to call it a hangover because it wasn't strong enough for that.

Cam finished the last bite of her eggs and stood. Whether it was the fresh air, the fact that she was happy here, or that she was simply healing, she was doing much better; moving better, laughing more, had a much better appetite—she was on her second plate of breakfast—and seemed almost back to normal—as normal as she could be with her shoulder still warped, although even that seemed to be getting better; she'd ridden Sunshine with easy grace and assurance, and Shana knew the working of arm and shoulder muscles required to ride the horse would be good for her.

"Since we know she's on the way, Charlie and I will take Sunshine and Storm out to see how the work's coming on the caretaker's cabin." Shana nodded assent; she wanted to keep Cam and Siobhan as far apart as possible. After what Siobhan had said to Cam, her feelings about the half-Iroquois woman was obvious and Shana wanted to make sure Charlie didn't get his hands on her sister. The results would be…unpleasant.

Snake Eyes too got up, and Shana simply nodded. His tolerance for her sister had never been good; after that night at the dinner table a week ago it had become non-existent. As much as Snake Eyes wanted to see Siobhan get the pants scared off her by the little girl's ghost, his desire to witness it was overridden by the need to stay away from her, so Shana was just going to have to give them a blow-by-blow later. She had a feeling he would take a run through the woods while Cam and Charlie rode, and all three of them would eventually end up at the caretaker's cabin, then come back together.

So the house was empty when Siobhan drove up the curving front drive fifteen minutes later. Shana met her at the door with cheerful—albeit slightly mocking—politeness.

"I'm sorry about what happened the last time. The wind took the door out of my hand and slammed it." Siobhan looked skeptically at Shana, but Shana schooled her features into an expression of apparently convincing truthfulness and stepped back, allowing Siobhan to step in, then casually took her hand off the knob. The door swung shut lazily, slowly, the lock engaging with a quiet click.

She took her sister through the house; foyer to living room/sitting room; small bath, kitchen; She watched her sister run a hand over the material of the couches and chairs, testing the quality and silently cataloguing the value of the fabric and wood; watched her sister look for the designer's names or manufacturer's brands on the furniture, adding up dollars in her head for each couch, each chair, each desk and table and lamp. She did the same thing with the tasteful, if bland, paintings and murals hanging on the walls, the huge antique grandfather clock in the hallway (the one item of furniture here in this house that Shana actually liked), the lushly padded, upholstered seats on the breakfast nook and the thick, expensive Berber carpeting in the recreation room.

She carefully pretended not to notice when a picture that Siobhan reached out to touch (likely to ascertain whether the gilded frame was made of actual metal or just painted wood) tilted itself askew on the wall just before Siobhan's hand would have touched it; her sister's hand missed the paining entirely and touched plaster on the wall instead. Siobhan's eyes grew round and she snatched her hand away. The second painting she tried to touch started to pendulum right and left, gently, not quite moving away from Siobhan's hand but certainly threatening to do so.

A cushion that Siobhan touched went sailing to the floor just as she touched it; Shana pretended not to notice and Siobhan, looking uncertain, carefully picked up the cushion with her thumb and forefinger and hurriedly dropped it back onto the chair it had fallen from, as if afraid it would bite her but also unsure if she herself hadn't accidentally knocked it off the chair. Another chair made of a particularly smooth-grained fine cherrywood got a caressing pat from Siobhan—and promptly fell over. An open door that Shana walked through casually, leading Siobhan through, practically slammed shut just behind her sister, making Siobhan gasp in startlement.  
"Oh, it's just the wind," Shana managed to say airily with a straight face. "It's an old house, and there are a lot of unexpected drafts, you know how that goes." She pretended not to see her sister's skeptical look, and led her back out into the foyer to the staircase.

She'd already noticed that the stairs were creaky, and as they paused on a landing so Shana could point out the gilded hardwood railing, Siobhan nearly screamed as they distinctly heard footsteps ascending the staircase behind them. "Shana!"

"It's just the steps settling, Siobhan. They do it all the time after we go up them. When we step they creak, and when we take our weight off them, they settle back into place." She leaned over the railing to point at the chandelier—just as the footsteps passed both of them, a chill breeze ruffling a lock of Siobhan's hair.

"Shana!" Shana really had to fight to keep a straight face this time—she was sure Siobhan's shriek could have been heard all over the four acre property.

"What? Don't yell like that when I'm leaning over the banister, Siobhan, I could have fallen!"

"Didn't you…didn't you just feel that really cold chill that went through here?" Siobhan's voice seemed slightly shaky.

"No, I didn't." But then, she'd been leaning forward and might not have felt the chill of Sarah's passing, but she felt no need to mention that to Siobhan. "Now, about the chandelier…" it was really a magnificent piece, triangular crystal prisms hanging in alternating rows with round faceted crystals and larger drops, each one throwing off light and sending dancing rainbows in different directions on the wall.

And as if on cue, the chandelier shook as if it had been tapped gently by an invisible hand. A few gentle swings, exactly as if someone had jumped from the top of the banister, tapped the chandelier with a hand in passing on its way to the floor below. Shana would have bet that if she could have seen Sarah, that was probably what the little girl ghost had done, jumped off the banister railing and hit the chandelier with one hand on her way to the floor below. Something Shana would have thought of to do when she was younger, scaring and scandalizing her mother and making her father laugh. Any moment now, and Sarah'd be climbing up the stairs to see if she could do it again.

Siobhan stared at the swinging chandelier. "Shana? Did the former owner say anything about a ghost here?"

Shana wanted to laugh. Normally her stoic, pragmatic sister would be the last one to even think about the possibility of a ghost, but apparently this time she was seeing enough to admit of the possibility. And Sarah was being clever with this too, timing her pranks for times when Shana could claim it was just Siobhan's imagination…

She gave Siobhan a tour of the upstairs, the master bathroom with its giant tub (Shana hadn't used it yet; it was shaped like the one Kennedy had in his bathroom and just looking at it made her shiver, remembering nearly being drowned in it) but Siobhan's eyes lit up at the sight of it and she forgot to look around behind her for the presence of the ghost. As Shana and Siobhan turned to leave, Siobhan took one last look behind her at the tub—just in time to see the shower curtain slide along its rail until it closed.

Siobhan's shriek made Shana wince. "What?" she said, feigning irritability as she turned and glared at Siobhan.

"I—the—that—didn't you see it?"

Shana rolled her eyes. "Stop being such a drama queen, Siobhan."

"The shower curtain closed by itself!" Siobhan's voice was a couple of octaves higher than normal. "This place is haunted!"

"Don't be silly, Siobhan. There's no such thing as ghosts. The wind just blew the shower curtain closed." Shana reached out and casually pushed the shower curtain open. "See? Nothing there. Come on, let me show you the rest of the house." The next two rooms passed without incident, despite (or maybe because) of Siobhan checking each room carefully before walking in, and never progressing past the first two feet beyond the doors of each room. The last room, the one that Cam and Charlie were in, Shana just opened the door, let Siobhan see the room was the same as the others, and shut it quickly; she didn't want Siobhan to invade Cam's privacy.

They went back downstairs—again, without incident—and Shana prepared for the coup de grace; taking Siobhan down to the wine cellar. Siobhan's eyes lit up, but even as she started to walk over to the racks, no doubt to see if there were any expensive wines and try inveigle one out of Shana if there were…

…and all hell broke loose.

Two wine bottles, one right after the other, shot out of the lower portion of the wine rack, hovered in midair at eye height on Siobhan, then as Shana's sister screamed, the bottles shattered on the floor, splashing red wine all over her white slacks. A second later, the door to the boarded-up closet opened, and Shana stumbled backward, as if she were being pulled. "Siobhan! Help me!" she screamed, stretching her arm toward her sister. It was a move she, Allie, and Court had practiced when they had taken Their Guys on a hiking trip a few years back for April Fools Day; it had worked then (at least on Wayne and Dash, though not Snake Eyes) and it was working now. Instead of grabbing for Shana's hand and keeping her from being 'taken' by the ghost, Siobhan turned and fled, screaming, running up the basement stairs. In the basement, Shana put her hands on her hips partly amused, partly irritated, as she heard the front door bang open and her sister flee the house.

"Look at that. No concern for her sister. Run out of here and save her skin and leave me behind. Didn't even make an attempt to save me." But she couldn't help the twitching of her lips.

When Charlie, Cam and Snake Eyes came home, Shana regaled them over dinner with the story of the day, and kept them all in stitches with imitations of her sister screaming and running. The merriment only increased when Mr. O'Hara called later. He sounded stern over the phone, but Shana, sensitive to nuances of tone and pattern, could tell that on the other end of the phone, her father was trying desperately hard not to laugh.

"I'm glad to hear you're all right. When Siobhan came home she was hysterically claiming that the Hounds of Hell had jumped out of the basement floor and grabbed you and dragged you down with them."

"I can't imagine what she's talking about, Dad, I just gave her a tour of the house since she's been wanting to see it so much and she just got hysterical. Really, I can't imagine for the life of me why she got hysterical."

A slight chuckle; that was all Mr. O'Hara allowed himself. "I see. But your mother informs me she's in shock and her physician has prescribed a sedative, and your mother, while also being concerned for you—"

"Then why hasn't Mom called me yet?" Shana demanded.

Her father's voice took on a stern note. "Shana. You will not talk to or about your mother in that tone of voice. Your mother, while also concerned for you, is convinced this was a deliberate trick constructed by all of you to scare Siobhan and is currently not disposed to look kindly on any of you."

"It was my fault, Dad." Shana was instantly contrite. "Tell Mom that I came up with the idea, Snake Eyes, Cam, and Charlie weren't even here most of the day. You can tell Mom it's my fault, and I'm sorry for scaring Siobhan…even if I might think she's exaggerating this a little bit."

"A little?" Mr. O'Hara snorted. "Siobhan insisted her husband come home from the office to care for her with her nervous breakdown. I have no doubt she'll have told her story to the news by now, and coupled with the discovery of the little girl's remains on your property, it's going to be one of the most sensational news stories of the week."

And when they went to the rec room and turned on the TV, they found Mr. O'Hara was right. The discovery of the missing Sarah Campbell's remains was the hottest story of the night; the discovery of where she was found, and the coroner confirming that she'd been tortured before her throat was cut, was sure to make national, if not international, news. Pictures of the manor were displayed on the news, along with aerial shots of where her body had been found on a plan of the plantation pulled from Atlanta's land records. And it also noted that the property had been own by the late, unlamented Damien Kennedy, and speculation was rife that he had been the one to abduct, torture, and murder a little girl. Even Siobhan was interviewed, sitting in a large easy chair at home, in clothes a couple sizes too big for her calculated to make her look small and frail and sick, whispering in a pained tone and with a face pale with makeup several shades lighter than her own skin (Shana could tell because Siobhan hadn't powdered her neck to match her face) to feign shock. Fortunately for Shana, Cam, Charlie and Snake Eyes, the reporter seemed content to get Siobhan's story of the ghost (with more elaborate detail added to each telling) and seemed disinclined to speak to Shana.

"You know, Shana, I could be wrong, but I don't think you're going to have to worry about marketing and PR to advertise this place as a haunted bed and breakfast," Cam said with a laugh as they turned off the TV and headed to bed. "I think Siobhan just did that rather nicely for you."


	24. Chapter 24: Honeymoon-California

**Chapter 24: Honeymoon-California**

"I am not going to spend my honeymoon answering calls from people who want to come and stay!" Shana exclaimed in exasperation as she put the phone down for the sixth time that morning.

Cam looked up and grinned. "Well, that's what you get for owning a haunted bed and breakfast," she chuckled.

Shana rolled her eyes. True to Cam's words of the day before, Siobhan had indeed unwittingly assisted her with PR and marketing. The phone had rung multiple times that morning, from reporters, people wanting to see the crime scene, paranormal researchers, and curious citizens.

Shana stared at the cordless phone in her hand as it rang again, and gnawed her lower lip. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. I want you to go and pack, we're going to go out to our California cabin for the rest of our honeymoon. It's got as much room as we have here but there will be a lot less people calling every five minutes!" She sounded frustrated. "This is supposed to be my honeymoon, I'm supposed to be enjoying my husband, and instead I've spent my time solving murders and laying ghosts and making business plans!"

"And scaring your sister white. Even if some of that was makeup, I think you really did scare her a bit." Cam grinned. "I'll go pack. Anything has to be better than the humidity and heat down here. I love you, Shan, but I really think that if given a choice, Charlie and I are going to be spending most of our time at my cottage on the reservation—it's a lot cooler there!"

"It'll be cooler and a lot less sticky in the California mountains. Trust me. You'll love it up there." Cam gave her a skeptical look, one eyebrow raised, and Shana laughed and gave her a light push in the direction of the stairs. "Come on. Go pack before I get mad and start throwing glass and wine bottles around myself!"

Cam got back upstairs just as Charlie came out of the bathroom. "Where are we going?" he asked as she hauled her duffel bag out from under the bed and started to pack.

"Shana's decided that we're done here and we're going to head to her and Snake Eyes' cabin in California," Cam sighed as she opened a drawer and started pulling out neatly-folded clothing.

Charlie slipped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist. "You know if you really want to go home, my parents can get a hotel room while their place is being built. We could enjoy our honeymoon together with no one else." He nuzzled her neck, kissed her earlobe.

She melted against him. "I can't do that to your parents, Charlie. No, our—they're my parents now too. And we already had our honeymoon—enjoyed it to the fullest. Shana invited us, and Snake Eyes definitely wanted us along—I think because he thinks that Shana and I are good for each other—so if you really don't mind, I would like to go to California with Shana and Snake Eyes." She grinned suddenly. "And when she told me to go pack, it was practically an order. I don't think I should disobey a Master Sergeant."

Charlie grinned as he pulled his suitcase from under the bed and started loading clothes in it. "Me either. Okay, we can give this a try."

They were all military and they had packed light, so it only took five more phone calls before everyone was ready. Brian had lent them his car for the duration of their stay, and they piled into it.

The first place they stopped was Mr. Anderson's, to give him the keys and inform him of where they were going. "I didn't come here to spend my honeymoon answering phones and giving tours. And the caretaker's cottage isn't finished, so my husband and my friends and I are going to go to our cabin in the California mountains for some peace and quiet. Here's the keys, you have full access to the account with the startup money, and if you could just keep an eye on the progress of the caretaker's cottage renovations and mail me the keys to this address," she gave him the address of Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn; mail meant for personnel at Joe Base went to Hamilton and then brought over by a trusted officer, so she knew she would get it.

She had a different set of instructions for Mrs. Anderson. "Everything in the house is straightened and the refrigerator is full, so you can move in today if you like and then just bring over your stuff one at a time. However, I do want to warn you that yes, the manor is haunted by the little girl who was murdered. Don't worry, she's intelligent and she's friendly; she scared my sister on my say-so. My sister and I don't have a good relationship. Just say hello once in a while, and she can lift glasses and silverware, so you could ask her help to set tables and stuff? She's very lonely; her mother died of cancer and her dad drank and she was homeless and hungry—that's how she ended up in Damien Kennedy's clutches, he lured her in with promises of food and a place to sleep and then raped tortured and killed her."

"Poor little child. It'll take some getting used to, but I'm sure we'll get along. I'll do my best, anyway." Mrs. Anderson took it in stride.

The Andersons' daughter, who reminded Shana of Courtney with her long blond hair and brilliant smile, promised to take care of the horses and stable; her mare, a tall coppery bay she told them was named 'Phoenix' would be arriving from the boarding stables that afternoon and she would ride her over to the stable to join Sunshine and Storm.

With all those details taken care of, they headed out. Shana pulled her brother's car up outside her house, having already texted him that she was coming, and so it was he who drove them to the airport, he and Shana snickering all the while about the prank she'd played on Siobhan with Sarah's help. According to him, every male in the family had found the entire incident to be incredibly funny, even Siobhan's husband (although Shana was sworn to secrecy about it; she wasn't supposed to know.)

She promised not to tell, and they got on a plane at the airport for California. On the way, Cam used Shana's laptop to find books she wanted to read and download them to her new electronic book, something she hadn't yet had a chance to do since she'd bought the reader earlier in the week.

"It's just been so busy, I haven't really had a chance to find something to read," she confessed as Shana was searching the web, using the plane's WiFi, to find a website from which to find books.

"You know, you should consider getting a laptop of your own," she told Cam.

"Don't be silly. Whatever would I do with one?" Cam shrugged.

"This, for example," Shana teased as her laptop loaded the last book and she disconnected the reader, handing it to Cam. "And so we can send emails and messages when you're on the reservation later. Mail can be inefficient and we have limited phone time, you know."

"I'll consider it. I will admit that I've thought about it, but I don't really know what's good out there. I don't pay a lot of attention to electronics—I've never been really good with gadgets."

"How did you get the music on your MP3 player?"

"Um." Cam looked slightly embarrassed. "Adam bought it for me a while back and loaded the music on there. Some of it is stuff I don't really like, but I don' know how to get it off, or put the stuff I do like on there."

Shana laughed at her. "All the more reason why you should get a laptop. Here, let me show you…"

Snake Eyes and Charlie dozed the whole way; as trained military, the instinct drummed into them during training dictated that they should get some sleep while they could; and Snake Eyes was also expecting that once they landed, Shana was going to want to go shopping before they headed up to their cabin. It was something they always did; when they landed, they'd get a rental car, go shopping for whatever she could think of they might need, including groceries; then they'd drive up to the cabin and stay there. Depending on how long they would stay, they might need to make a trip down to get more groceries for the refrigerator, but that was usually the extent of their 'vacations' here at the cabin.

There were, after all, much more interesting things to do inside the cabin…to and with each other.

This time when they landed however, the routine was slightly different. They picked up the rental at the airport, and then went shopping, but instead of just getting groceries and running, they did some major shopping. Shana had found out that Cam had no makeup and seemed determined to get her some, and both girls spent a long time arguing over color and brand. Then Shana practically ordered Charlie and Snake Eyes to 'go do something with yourselves' as she talked Cam into getting their hair properly trimmed, manicure and pedicure.

"Shana, no one's going to see my feet!"Cam complained good-naturedly but went along anyway.

They met the girls outside a high-end famous lingerie store, one that Courtney had modeled for before she joined the Army. Cam balked when she saw Shana about to go in. "Shana, I don't think I really want to go there."

"Oh come on. Just a few girly things. You hardly have anything nice, Cam, spend some money on yourself!"

Cam looked at Charlie and Snake Eyes; Charlie was as red as Shana's hair, and Snake Eyes looked like he was searching for trouble—something, anything, to avoid having to go into that store, where the predominant color was pink, and where the things hanging on the racks didn't even begin to measure up to the word 'decent'. But Shana was not to be denied, and she dragged Cam in with her, Snake Eyes and Charlie following slowly behind as if she were taking them to their execution. Cam balked when she saw the prices, but Shana overrode her. "You're a millionaire now, Cam, you can indulge yourself and buy a few nice things." Then she leaned in and whispered, "Besides, don't you want to look nice for Charlie?"

Cam looked at Charlie, who seemed to have forgotten his earlier disinterest and was now eyeing a mannequin wearing a sheer bit of lace and chiffon and nothing else. She giggled and nudged Shana with an elbow. "I do think he's imagining me in that."

Shana had to smother a chuckle at the way Charlie surreptitiously adjusted his pants around his hips, and gave Cam a merry, wicked grin as she saw a fluttery salesgirl come toward them. "Can I help you today?" she asked. Her words were directed at Shana and Cam, but her eyes were roving all over Charlie's well-muscled, solidly-built frame and Snake Eyes' leaner, wiry, but no less solid build.

"My wife needs some underclothing," Charlie said, but his male ego was obviously inflating exponentially with every appreciative glance he was getting, not only from the salesgirls, but also a few other customers as well. The salesgirl who had spoken, however much she might have appreciated Charlie and Snake Eyes' physiques, apparently wasn't blind to the responsibility of her job, since she quickly offered to measure Cam with a measuring tape. Cam was slightly self-conscious when she took her own bra off inside the dressing room so the woman could measure her and the woman looked shocked when she saw the scars, but Shana spoke quickly. "We're all active serving military. On medical leave after being wounded in a hostile zone." The woman stopped looking shocked and became immediate sympathy. None of Cam's old bras fit right anymore, she'd last purchased them before Rosa did her reconstructive work on her breast, and while the one side of her chest was still smaller than the other, the saleslady found some very pretty items that had padding which could be removed from the cups in order to assure fit. Although Cam complained about the expense, she was not immune to the lure of some very pretty satin-and-lace items that made Charlie have to adjust his pants again.

By that time the two men standing there watching their girls select feminine undergarments had attracted a lot of attention, and not even Snake Eyes was immune to the flattery. In fact, Shana and Cam were getting a great deal of amusement out of watching their guys try earnestly to pretend they did not notice the looks they were getting. Both men had opted for jeans and t-shirts, and their powerful thigh muscles, Charlie's developed from running obstacle courses and Snake Eyes' leaner, more wiry frame developed from years of martial arts disciplines and active military service, were well-displayed by their choice of clothing. The two men themselves seemed torn between loving the female attention being directed at them and a painful desire to make sure their wives knew they weren't interested in anyone else, all the while trying to maintain the fiction that they were aloof and couldn't care less that they were the only two males in a store that was almost overwhelmingly pink.

Just to prolong the guys' anguish, Shana and Cam spent some time looking through and sniffing through the various designer-fragrance bath supplies; soap and lotion and perfume, and it was then that Shana confessed that she'd been avoiding using her usual peach shampoo because it brought back memories.

"Snake Eyes is going to miss that," Cam said quietly to her as they took a sniff of something that said it had vanilla and rose oil. "The whole time you were gone, he slept in your bed, hugging your pillow so he could smell you and imagine you were there with him. Courtney even made a soapy solution out of your peach shampoo and soaked a pillowcase in it, then let it dry without rinsing it so the smell would be stronger and would last longer."

"I…he…" Shana's eyes were suspiciously bright.

"Shana, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you cry. I noticed you're using his shampoo right now and I'm sure he doesn't mind."

"But…he associates peaches with me." Shana bit her lip. As much as she hated the memories, that smell was an integral part of what Snake eyes associated with her. "They say..when you lose one sense, everything else becomes a bit more acute."

'He lost his voice, not his sight or taste or anything like that."

"But he lost something. And I know he misses it sometimes, I can see it when he's trying to sign something difficult and he's frustrated because there aren't words to say what he wants to say, or it takes too long." She stared at the shelf of lotions and bath products, then sighed. "All right, come on. Let's go pay for this stuff." The mischievous gleam was back in her eyes. 'I think we've tortured the guys long enough."

Giggling, the two headed for the register.

Shana didn't think much about it the rest of the afternoon—they went to grab dinner at a pizzeria, all of them gratified to see that Cam ate with good appetite and she was definitely putting on weight—then hit the grocery store to stock the refrigerator. Cam seemed to get more and more comfortable as they got farther and farther up the mountain, and as they parked the car and started to walk up the last few feet of hill toward the house without Cam's lungs sounding strained or winded, Shana wondered if the thick, sticky heaviness of Atlanta's humid air had made breathing more difficult for her, because she wasn't getting as tired or as out of breath as she had at the manor. When they finally crowned the top of the hill and Cam saw Shana and Snake eyes' cabin for the first time, she drew a deep breath and smiled hugely in delight. "Oh. Oh, Shana. No wonder you didn't want to stay in Atlanta."

She was as delighted with the place as Shana and Snake Eyes were, and late evening saw her sprawled comfortably on a picnic blanket overlooking the lake with Charlie beside her, both of them comparing knowledge of stars and constellations. Shana heard Charlie begin a story about 'Three Sisters' for the three sisters in the constellation Orion, and she and Snake Eyes took that as their cue to slip into the cabin.

She put away the new clothes and things she'd bought, then went to the bathroom. A moment of indecision as she looked at the tub, then, steeling herself, she turned on the tap and added bubbles to the bath. As she sank in, a brief flash brought back the memories of the tub in Kennedy's bathroom, his attempt to drown her, but that was very quickly eclipsed by the sheer unadulterated pleasure of sinking into a hot bath up to her neck. Eyes closed, she reached for the smooth, rounded bottle of her customary peach shampoo left sitting on the edge of the tub.

A hand brushed hers, pressed another bottle into her hand. She could feel from the texture of the plastic that it was Snake Eyes', and she didn't even bother to open her eyes as she handed it back to him. "Not yours, sweetheart. Mine."

He picked up the bottle of peach shampoo, but instead of handing it to her, he dampened his hands in the water and poured the shampoo into his own hands, worked it into a lather, and started to wash her hair. Gentle, firm, sure, every stroke of his fingertips against her hair and scalp full of love and tenderness, and as the scent of peaches filled her nose, the memories of Kennedy were like a bad dream, fading quickly. Instead what she remembered was all the other times they had done this, all the other times she'd lain in this tub with this man washing her hair, and she opened her eyes, bright green darkening to deep emerald as she tugged at his sleeve. He understood what she was asking, what she was requesting, and without a word he peeled off his clothes and joined her in the tub.

His warm, wet hands on her skin made her shiver and close her eyes in delight; there hadn't been many chances in Atlanta to enjoy finally being married to the one man in the world who could turn her into a panting sex kitten, and this first time, here in the cabin they shared, that they had built, felt like the real beginning to her honeymoon. His lips claimed hers, and she scooted back in the tub so that he too could sit, cross-legged, then smiled happily as she slid up onto his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck, and gave him a hungry, lustful kiss…

It was only later as he was about to slip into sleep that he thought again about the snippet of memory his mind had dredged up, something about a woman's body being more responsive when she was fertile…but he fell asleep before he could finish the thought.


	25. Chapter 25: Love

**Chapter 25: Love**

The next day dawned clear and bright, and although Shana was dying to go out, there were things they had to attend to first. There were three bedrooms here at the cabin, and Cam and Charlie took the second while Snake Eyes and Shana took their usual master. Bed linens needed to be aired out for their two week stay, furniture needed to be dusted and the kitchen cleaned, and when they went through the attics for stuff that Shana and Snake eyes had put in storage, they discovered there was a leak in the roof and water had collected on the tarps and plastic that they'd wrapped everything in.

So Shana and Cam set about cleaning that while the guys went about fixing the roof. The cleaning took less time than the roof-fixing, and they came out with a blanket, spread that out on the sunny grass, Shana with a beer, Cam sipping lemonade, and they both watched their sweaty, shirtless guys working on the roof. Shana was still basking in the warm glow from the evening before, and she grinned appreciatively at the play of Snake Eyes' wiry muscles flexing under tanned skin, at the way his jeans pulled tight against powerful thighs and lean buttocks without a hint of cellulite.

Cam leaned over as Shana was lost in contemplation of what else she could do to that hard, tight body and said "Shana, I swear if you start purring I will smack you."

Shana choked on a mouthful of beer, spluttered for a moment as she tried to catch her breath, then burst into outright laughter. "Do I really look that bad?" she finally managed to gasp out.

"Yes, you do." Cam grinned at her friend. "Like a cat who's just found a whole saucer of cream. Smug and self-satisfied. And don't think Snake Eyes up there hasn't noticed you watching him. He's been on his knees with his ass in the air pretending to hammer the same nail for the last ten minutes just so you could ogle his backside."

"I am not ogling! I'm…appreciating." Shana felt her cheeks flush, and to cover it she ducked her head and returned her attention to her beer.

"Uh-huh. Whatever you say, Shan." Cam shook her head.

"Hey, I notice you're not immune to Charlie's charms up there," Shana said after watching her friend watch Charlie for a couple of minutes. "And I swear he's raising that hammer a little higher than necessary just to flex those marvelous biceps of his."

Cam's cheeks acquired a dusky copper hue. Shana snickered. "I will admit, though, he does have nice arms. Not as nice as Snake Eyes, but definitely nice. Did you see the way that salesgirl in the lingerie store yesterday was looking at him? I swear she looked like a cat eyeing up a nice fat canary." She tossed down the last of her beer. "I had a question—you and Charlie are newly married and I expected to see it bother you somewhat."

Cam shook her head. "Not really. I mean, I guess it started to bother me a bit, but when I went down our link, I found he was kind of embarrassed by the way she was looking at him. Flattered that she would appreciate him, but embarrassed all the same by the way she was so openly staring at him. And he felt no attraction for her, none at all. I knew I didn't have anything to worry about. Just like right now I know he's showing off his muscles just to see me smile."

"Can I tell that with our bond?" Shana was intrigued.

"You should. Ours—Charlie's and mine—is relatively new compared to yours, you just haven't been aware of it on a conscious level. Charlie taught Snake eyes conscious control while we were…gone. He knew the link was there from listening to Snake Eyes tell Doc that he saw you in his dreams—and when Snake Eyes came into the infirmary with cuts and scratches that we later found out were in the same place yours were." Cam smiled. "Close your eyes and reach down into yourself, find that little thread of light that connects him to you. Then follow it. The closer you get the more of his emotions you'll feel."

Slightly apprehensive—and intrigued—Shana closed her eyes and felt for that thread of light. Each time she tried to find it, it got easier; this time it was almost immediate. She felt down it, and felt Snake eyes' emotions.

Happiness. Pleasure that Shana was watching. Delight that she found him attractive, a feeling that he was the luckiest man in the world for being able to attract a woman like Shana. A little wonder that he was married to her, that they'd finally made permanent something that had been in their souls for years but was now finally acknowledged by everyone. Satisfaction. And an almost overwhelming sense of male pride in the fact that he was toned enough to please her and make her happy.

Shana grinned as she looked at Cam. "I see what you mean." Then her smile turned cheerfully wicked. "Hey. Let's make them look at us."

Cam raised her eyebrows, but smiled. "I'm game. What do you have in mind?"

Up on the roof, Charlie scrubbed an arm across his sweating forehead, then blinked as he saw the blanket below them was empty. "Hey. Where did they go?"

Snake Eyes looked down, noticing for the first time that Shana wasn't down there anymore, and shrugged. _Maybe they went inside to use the bathroom? Who knows, with women?_

Charlie chuckled. "You're right. Who knows."

They started fixing the roof in earnest, now focused more on the roof than on impressing the girls below—which went sailing completely out the window a moment later when both Shana and Cam came out, dressed in…well, it might have been called a bathing suit, but neither of the guys would have even considered taking their wives to a public beach wearing those…fabric scraps.

Charlie was so distracted he accidentally hammered his thumb.

And those two little minxes knew the effect they were having, too. Shana had gained weight and muscle back, was sinewy, supple and toned, fair skin slightly freckled and slowly acquiring a sun-kissed golden tan. Cam, despite the scars and her still-apparent thinness, was still beautiful to Charlie, and many of the scars were starting to fade from their initial angry red to a slightly more normal clear honey. Under the bright sun, Snake Eyes studied the scarring. He could see where it had drawn tight, causing Cam's shoulder to tilt upward and warp her back, but he could also see where repeated exercise and gentle stretches were starting to give her back some normal mobility; if she hadn't been in the Army and muscular movement was a necessity, she could skip surgery and just wait for her skin to stretch naturally, but since she was military, she didn't have that luxury. He could see, however, that an incision made by a surgeon right along her shoulderblade would release the tension and return mobility almost immediately, provided she gave her skin enough time to heal.

And then all thoughts vanished as Shana stretched out on her stomach on the blanket and Cam poured some lotion into her hands, then started to work it into Shana's back from shoulders to heels. Neither man could even pretend to concentrate on fixing the roof anymore; they watched, libido rising as Cam worked lotion into Shana's body in an undeniably sensual way; then Shana flipped over and Cam worked it into the front of her body. Shana then sat up, Cam lay down, and Shana proceeded to return the favor for Cam.

Cam sat up as Shana finished applying the tanning lotion, then blinked as she looked up and saw the empty roof. "Hey, where did they go?" she asked, looking around. "I didn't even see them finish up."

"Neither did I," Shana said. "I wonder where they went—"

She never had time to finish her sentence.

Someone grabbed her from behind, and a moment before she lashed out in panic she smelled the familiar scent of her husband's sweat and felt the sword-calluses on the hands that picked her up. She screamed in laughter, pummeling his back with her fists (albeit gently; she could sense his mischievous mood down their bond and knew he wasn't going to hurt her.)

Charlie had done the same thing to Cam, picking her up, throwing her over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. "Me, brave. You, squaw," he pretended to grunt. "You my woman now." Cam was laughing so hard Charlie was having trouble carrying her, a problem that ended abruptly when both Charlie and Snake Eyes unloaded their burdens at the end of the pier that led out onto the lake.

Shana's scream of startlement was cut off abruptly as she hit the surface of the lake and went under, scant seconds after Cam hit the surface too. Seconds later both women were treading water. Cam blinked, pulling strands of heavy, wet hair out of her eyes as Shana proceeded to swear, explosively and at length, in Gaelic.

Snake Eyes just stood there on the edge of the dock and grinned. So did Charlie. That was when the girls made their move. After a quick glance at each other, in which nothing needed to be said, they lunged for the end of the dock, grabbed their respective husbands' ankles, and yanked him down in the water with them.

Charlie came up spluttering, to face Cam, treading water with a wicked smile on her face. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," she grinned.

In answer, he skimmed his hand along the surface of the water, sending a huge wave of water at her. She ducked, answered with one of her own. Shana took her side, then, and the afternoon ended with a game of splash and tag in the still rather cold lake.

Evenings were still cool, and Cam was still healing, so Shana and Snake Eyes took a quick shower and then offered Cam and Charlie the use of the tub, which Cam declined at first because to her a bath deep enough to soak all of her in was a shocking luxury, but Charlie accepted with delight and coaxed her into it, and it gave Shana and Snake Eyes a chance to prepare dinner for the four of them. Snake Eyes asked her, jokingly, if she wouldn't rather wait for Cam to come out of the bath so she could give her friend another cooking lesson, but Shana eyed him indignantly. "You have to be kidding. I love her, she's my friend, but she's a complete disaster in the kitchen and there's no way I'm going to let her anywhere close to mine."

He grinned smugly. That earned him a smack on the arm…and then a kiss.

Cam eyed the tub dubiously. "It seems like a huge waste of water."

"It is. But the fun is worth it." Charlie was already peeling off his clothes, hard bronzed body glistening with water from the lake and not a little sweat from their earlier exertion on the roof. It had been an intensely warm day, even hotter with the sun's rays reflecting off the roof, and while the cold dip in the lake had cooled hum off, he really wanted to wash off the seat and grime from the roof and relax in the hot water.

And he really wanted to enjoy his wife. His stubborn, overly-sensible, adorable wife, who had no idea how much of a treat a hot bath could actually be. And well, he was determined to get her in it, even if he had to drag her in kicking and screaming.

She couldn't be that stubborn, could she?

She was standing there, looking apprehensively at the tub, when something occurred to him. He knew about her past, the fact that she'd been the victim of abuse—was it possible that a tub held bad memories for her, and would his insistence on it hurt her? Would she feel like she had to get into the tub with him just because he wanted it and not because she really wanted to try it with him? "Sweetheart, if you really don't want to do this, we don't have to. I didn't think…maybe the tub reminds you of something you'd rather forget?"

"Um. Not really. I'm game if you are," but even he could spot that for the lie it really was.

He stepped close to her, wrapping his arms around her. "Baby, if you really don't want to, I'm not going to make you. Was it your Aunt and Uncle?"

She swallowed hard. "Not exactly. Just…one of the clients they rented me to…he had one of these. He made me take a bath with him, made me wash him, and…it was the first time I'd ever…been forced to…use my mouth." Her eyes filled with tears and she looked up at him, unconsciously hunching her shoulders. "I'm sorry, you married a woman who's such a wreck, mentally and emotionally…"

He was horrified that she could even think that, and told her so. "Sweetheart, I love you. Nothing is going to change that. I don't think any the less of you for it—in fact, any reasoning, thinking human being would admire you more for even being willing to look at a hot tub again, much less thinking about getting into it. I don't want you to do things just because I want you to, I want you to do something because you want to." Something else occurred to him, and he groaned inwardly. 'And…I'm sorry about dumping you into the lake earlier—it didn't occur to me until just now that you'd been thrown into a pond in New York and you might have bad memories." He could only imagine how traumatic it would have been if she'd had a panic attack right there.

"I…it was a shock at first, but I could feel Shana there, and I could feel you there through our bond and it…kept me from panicking. There was a split second, but then I came up and Shana was yelling at Snake Eyes in Gaelic, and it was so funny I didn't even have time to panic. I don't think I'd ever trust anyone else to do something like that, but it's you, and it's different."

"Cam…at some point…will you sit down and tell me all about what they did to you so I can avoid doing something like that in the future?"

"Maybe. Someday. I don't really want to discuss it with you now." She started to pull off her shirt. "All right. Let's try this hot tub thing. Yes, Charlie, I really do want to," she said with a smile to his concerned look.

She sank gingerly into the tub, thinking for a moment about the last time she'd been in one of these…but Charlie was next to her, and the bathroom door was locked, and nothing was going to get at them here, not with Shana and Snake eyes in the kitchen and Charlie beside her. She trusted that her friends would help keep her safe, she didn't have to be constantly hypervigilant, and as she sat back in the tub, she felt herself relaxing. Really, this was nice…

And then it went beyond nice, as Charlie eased himself in beside her and grabbed the bath sponge, lathering it and starting to wash her back gently. The developing scars itched, but she was afraid to scratch in case she tore skin or her nails dug too deep, so most of the time she just tried to ignore it. But Charlie was gentle, using just the right amount of pressure to satisfy the itch but not enough to break the skin, and she moaned in sheer pleasure as he found all the itchy spots and sponged them until they—finally!—stopped itching.

His large hands were warm and gentle as he lathered his hands with soap and washed her, bare-handed, all over. She still marveled at the fact that her scars didn't seem to bother him, that there was no change in the tenderness of his expression, nothing but love and care and concern as he soaped her carefully. "I can't believe you don't see my scars," she sighed as he went on down her torso, over the white hypopigmented burn scarring.

He stopped, sat back and looked at her. "I do see them," he said, quietly. "And it pains me to know that you had to go through something so horrible, and I want to kill the people who hurt you. Every single one of them. As slowly and horribly as I can. But it is not mine to take revenge, that will be up to the Great Spirit, and in the meantime, I do what I can to offset every bad thing that happened to you. And I'll continue to do so, for the rest of your life. Every day, for the rest of your life. But each of those scars tells a story, a story of your survival, of your will to live, of your strength of will and character, and you would not be the person you are if you didn't have them. And I love the person you are."

She stared at him silently for a moment, eyes filling. "I…thank you, Charlie," she said finally, choking a little. "Thank you…every time I look at the scars and start hating them, hating myself, I'll remember that. They are a part of who I am, and I wouldn't be me without them…and I don't want to be anyone but me, because you're here and if I were someone else you wouldn't be here."

He leaned forward and kissed her damp forehead, cupped her chin and swiped at a tear with his thumb. "Then I'm glad I finally told you that." He stopped as he heard a peculiar noise. "Is that your stomach rumbling?"

"I'm a little hungry," she confessed.

He chuckled, a deep, throaty sound. "Then let's finish up and go downstairs. Whatever Shana's cooking down there, it smells really good."


	26. Chapter 26: Paintball

**Chapter 26: Paintball**

Slow. Controlled. Graceful as a dance.

The light from the rising sun creeping up the side of the mountain illuminated the two figures; one male, shirtless, muscular, wiry, with short blond hair and black pants; the other slim and curved, with a long red ponytail, black yoga pants and cropped exercise top. Both were performing _katas_ on the grassy lawn in front of the cabin, slow, graceful movements mirroring each other as sunlight illuminated them.

Cam stood at the front window, nursing a cup of coffee as she and Charlie watched Shana and Snake Eyes. They were all military, and accustomed to rising early; for Shana and Snake Eyes, katas in the sunrise were a part of their leave that they enjoyed while here at their cabin, and one that they observed religiously; they did them at Joe base too, in the dojo, but even Cam could see the difference between _katas_ performed out here in the middle of some of the most beautiful scenery Cam'd ever seen, and _katas_ performed in the Joes' dojo a couple hundred feet below ground. There was more of a sense of connectedness here, a feeling of harmony and being in tune with nature.

"I can see why they love it here," Cam said quietly as Charlie placed a warm hand on her back, watching their friends as they went through the intricate controlled movements. "There's a feeling of peace and serenity here that I've only ever found at my cottage on the reservation."

Charlie smiled. "I feel it too," he said. "If you're done with that coffee, care to join me out on the back lawn for a little meditation?"

She smiled and tossed back the last of the coffee. "Coming."

When Shana and Snake Eyes came in, relaxed and invigorated by their early-morning workout, they found the cabin empty. Shana was puzzled as she went through the upstairs, looking for her friend, but was answered moments later when she joined Snake Eyes in the kitchen. He was standing, looking out the window; when he heard her come in, he turned, handed her a cup of coffee, and pointed out the window.

She smiled as she joined him at the window and saw what he was looking at. "I guess they found their own uses for the peace and quiet up here, hmm?" she said as she took her first sip. "They do look like they're part of the landscape out there."

Charlie and Cam sat facing each other on the grassy rear lawn, both wearing traditional Native American garb, he in tunic and leggings, she in dress and leggings. Both had their eyes closed. Each one had their flutes in hand, and the melody they were playing didn't have any sort of rhythm or rhyme to it, just a meandering, random selection of notes. But Charlie's flute had a slightly deeper tone, Cam's was higher-pitched, and she was playing notes that were a counterpoint to his and blended harmoniously with his.

"How does she know what he's going to play?" Shana asked, then answered her own question. "Of course. Their bond." Snake eyes nodded as they listened; at one point, Charlie led the tune, with Cam playing counterpoint, low where he was high, high where he was low…but then they changed leads, so the higher-pitched flute led and the tenor flute followed, flawlessly, seamlessly. "I was wondering how this bond would work, with all of us out in the field—You know now that we're married, Clayton isn't going to send us out on separate missions without each other if he can absolutely help it, so we might as well figure out how this works for each of us."

Snake eyes raised his hands. What do you have in mind?

She grinned wickedly. "Paintball."

His eyes lit up, and her grin got wider. Back when they'd first decided to make this their retreat, their place to come when on leave and eventually to retire, they'd discovered the woods and surrounding grounds were perfect for paintball wars. Usually it was the two of them against each other, but with Cam and Charlie there, it would be a bit more of a challenge. They both loved paintball battles—it was a way to exercise the skills they'd learned as Army officers, but in a non-lethal mock-combat situation. Occasionally when Clayton had sent the team out on 'team-building exercises'—paintball was one of the Joes' favorite activities, and Shana had always enjoyed it, and so had Snake Eyes, mostly because the skills he had acquired as a ninja made him good at this—even better than she was. With Charlie and Cam's learned ability to sneak through woods silently, Charlie as a tracker and Cam as long-range recon patrol, paintball against them was going to be…interesting.

Cam raised her eyebrow when she and Charlie came in, packed their flutes away in the room they'd taken upstairs, and came down to have a breakfast of pancakes, sausage, and fried potatoes, which Shana and Snake Eyes had again cooked with no help from either Cam or Charlie (not that anyone was complaining; Cam was only too glad to relinquish a turn at chow prep and simply enjoy the results—and Shana was only too happy to do most of the cooking if it meant that Cam stayed away from her precious kitchen! "Paintball?" she looked meditative over a mouthful of friend potato. "I've never experienced it before. Is it fun?"

"Is it fun, she asks." Shana rolled her eyes in mock despair. "Cam, you need to get out and play more. You can't spend your whole life either dancing or shooting at people or swinging swords. You have to diversify a bit." She launched into an explanation of paintball, the rules, goals, and objectives. "So it's just like a war game, just like a skirmishing mission, but we'll go against each other, and the ammo is just balls of paint. Now, we do have to wear protective gear because those paintballs hurt when they hit you, but that just adds to the simulated realism—in a real combat situation, you'll be loaded with gear and have to move quickly."

"It sounds like fun," Cam said. "So…it is Charlie and I against you and Snake eyes, or is it going to be girls against boys?"

"If I might make a suggestion," Charlie said before Shana could respond, "Let's make it Cam and I against you two; and since you need to work on your psychic bond, let's have this game be completely silent. You two have the advantage of familiar ground; this is your home, you know the terrain and territory and are familiar with it. Cam and I, however, have the advantage that we have been trained since a young age to use stealth when stalking, to track and navigate, so I recommend Shana and Snake Eyes head out first, and then Cam and I have to track you and find you. And all of it has to be silent."

Shana grinned, green eyes sparkling. "Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Yes, Snake Eyes and I can work on our bond and the two of you can work on working together, something you haven't really had a chance to do because you two have such similar skills that you're more valuable on separate teams."

_And Shana can get a chance to work on her stealth. She's good, better than Courtney, or even Allie, but she's still not that good at stealth. So this will give her an opportunity to work on that. Okay? _Snake Eyes asked Shana, who nodded.

"Agreed." Shana stood up. "So how much of a head start do we have?"

"Mmm. Say, a half an hour? That should be good. Just enough for it to be challenging, but not far enough that we can't eventually catch up and have a good paintball war."

"You're on," Charlie nodded.

Half an hour after Shana and Snake eyes had left, Charlie and Cam climbed reluctantly out of their bed and started getting suited up. "I don't suppose we could call the whole thing off and just stay in bed the whole day?" Cam said slightly wistfully.

Being military, they were used to getting dressed quickly, and once outside they spotted the place where Shana and Snake eyes had vanished into the treeline almost immediately. Mindful of the rules, they communicated in sign language—as Snake eyes and Shana were no doubt doing; the rules were no talking, but sign language was silent, after all. _They didn't try too hard to cover their tracks. Looks like they were mostly focused on getting as much distance between us and them as possible._

Cam disagreed. _They know this mountain better than we do. Knowing how good a tactician both of them are, they've got a place in mind already that they can make a stand and would be easily defensible, and they're waiting up there for us. They would have tried to get there as fast as possible so they can make a stand and get an ambush ready._ A sudden thought curved her lips. _Unless they stopped to enjoy each other the way we did._

Charlie had to bite back the laughter that threatened to bubble out of him. _So if they're heading for a spot that would be easily defensible, where would they be going?_

Cam pointed up. _Farther up the mountain, presumably a place where they can see the paths that one would take. Maybe even a place where they could see us leave the cabin and walk into the treeline._

Charlie considered that. _So we operate under the assumption that they can see us, even if we can't see them._

Cam nodded. _I'd bet on it._

Charlie grinned_. So we're going to move through the underbrush as much as possible._

Cam nodded, thinking as she looked up at the slopes above them. _They would have picked a place where they could see us leave the cabin. I'm sure of it. So I say we split up, use our bond to coordinate, and approach this side of the mountain we're facing from behind. If you're coming from one side and I'm coming from the other, we can get them in a pincer move and trap them between us._

Charlie smiled and extended a hand. _Sounds like a plan to me. Lead on._

Shana flopped back limply against the side of the mossy boulder. _Snake Eyes, I swear you're going to kill me. _

He looked at her with wide, innocent eyes. _You want me to stop_?

She sat up, gloriously nude, and swatted him with an open hand. _If you stop I'll make you regret it. _She lay back down against the sun-warmed boulder and smiled.

He grinned at her. _As my wife wishes._

She cracked open on eye. _Smart-ass._

_Ah, but it was this smart ass you couldn't take your eyes off yesterday._

She grinned slightly sheepishly. _I didn't know you'd noticed._

_Sweetheart, if your eyes had been lasers my pants would have caught fire. Yes, I knew you were looking at me. And I didn't mind a bit. Confession? I love showing off for you._

She grinned_. And I love showing off for you._ She reached across his bare, sweaty chest, and grabbed the binoculars off the rock behind him, peering down toward the cabin. _I wonder if they—yes, they just left. Cam's hair is a little messed up—she and Charlie spent their half-hour just like we spent ours. Except that they were in a nice comfortable bed, and we were out here on the hard ground._

He narrowed his eyes. _I didn't hear you complaining._

Shana grinned. _No you didn't, and you won't. I don't know, but lately I can't get enough of you. It's got to be the last of those hormones that Rosa injected me with back on the island. _She leaned back, smiling. _Not that I'm complaining._

Snake Eyes peered through the binoculars at the forest spread out before them. _So what do you think they're going to do?_

Shana thought. _One of them is going to follow the trail we left—we didn't try too hard to cover our tracks, so it'll be easy. The other is going to parallel the first one until they reach us, and then one will attack us from the front to provide a distraction while the other attacks us from behind, so expect assault on two fronts. I expect Charlie will be the one conducting a full frontal assault, and Cam will be the one sneaking up behind us._ She reached for her suit, started to scramble into it. _We have probably a good hour before they reach us if they branch off our main trail to investigate the places where I turned off to lead them astray, but we might as well get suited up now just in case they aren't fooled by false trails I laid out for them. _She thought meditatively as they strapped on vests and loaded paintball ammo_. We should do this again at some point while we're here, do a full war-games exercise complete with booby traps and surprises. That might be fun, seeing what they come up with. _She smiled then, with cheerful maliciousness. _And we could do a girls-against-guys exercise._

_I thought we were going to enjoy our honeymoon, not spend the whole time running around in the woods._ Snake Eyes pretended to pout_. Most other people would find this incomprehensible._

She raised her eyebrow. _This is relaxing, for us. We're soldiers, Snake Eyes, we have a completely different mindset than most other people. And because we're elite soldiers, we have to work, constantly, to keep our skills sharp and our senses alert. And the best way is to engage in exercises that don't include combat stress. Not only that, Cam's still recovering and she needs to brush up on her skills._

_Have you wondered what we'd do when we muster out?_

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. _I've been thinking about that a bit more lately, I don't know, since we got married, I guess. I want kids, Snake Eyes, and I—we—can't have them while still with the Joes. And I'm thirty-five now, and I'm not getting any younger, and I know the older I am the harder it's going to be—Auggie's birth was incredibly hard on Liv, and she's only eight years older than I am. So my clock is ticking. I assume we'll come back here and decide what we want to do then pursue that. Or, if I'm careful with the restitution money and the bed and breakfast pays off, we can afford to put down roots here and look for something suitable. She sighed. I don't know. We'll have to see. I don't think I'm ready to make that kind of commitment yet_. She grabbed the binoculars from him, peered through them. _Now where are they?_

Cam held up a hand, the nearly-universal sign for stop, then pointed to a low-hanging branch of tree barely four inches above her head. The serrated edge of a wild chestnut tree leaf had caught a single strand of red hair on its edge and held it.

She didn't know if it was deliberate or not, but it was a sure sign that Shana and Snake Eyes had come this way, and further proof that they'd laid a deliberately clear 'come find me' trail. Cam had wasted time branching out to the side, only to discover they were dead ends and Shana had retraced her steps to rejoin the main trail. After that discovery they'd stuck to the trail they were following; a nearly straight path directly up the side of the mountain, heading for a small tumble of sandstone boulders close to the summit. It was the perfect lookout spot for someone with high-powered binoculars to be able to see the cabin, and who left it.

So Shana and Snake eyes knew they were coming.

What they didn't know was from where. Charlie guessed that they would be expecting a two-pronged attack, from the front and from behind, which would explain why they'd chosen that large pile of boulders. They could put their backs to the rocks and defend from the front, then they only needed to figure out which side Charlie and Cam would attack from. Cam was hoping that Shana and Snake Eyes wouldn't be expecting the two of them to split up and hit them from both sides. _I'm determined we are going to win this one,_ Cam thought mentally to Charlie as they met on the other side of the summit for a last strategy meeting before they attacked. Shana and Snake eyes are going to lose. She handed him her paintball gun. _Here. Shoot me once with this._

He gawked. Charlie_. We were all issued different colors. If I got shot by Shana and Snake eyes or you, I'd be out, but nothing Shana said indicated we'd be eliminated of we got our own paint on us. It could have been a defective paintball exploding during reload._

He stared at her…and a slow smile crept over his face. He took her paintball gun, aimed it at her, and fired a single blue paintball at her chest. It made a satisfyingly messy splat on the front of her suit, then they both started to creep around behind their prey's hideout. She waited until she heard the first staccato report of paintball ammo, then crept around the boulders until she could see the other side of the clearing. She could feel Charlie there, a presence warm and comforting in the back of her mind, there but unintrusive, like the ring around her finger. She waited until Shana had expended her initial run of ammo, and she stepped back to reload more paintballs.

With her distracted by the reloading process, and Snake Eyes busy firing at Charlie, Cam sauntered out of the treeline and sat down, laying her paintball gun across her lap. Shana looked up after she reloaded, did a double take, then saw the paint splat across the front of her suit and did exactly what Cam had gambled on; she figured Cam had been hit and 'eliminated' and turned her attention to Charlie as Snake Eyes started trying to reload.

Charlie stepped out of the treeline, the front of his suit marked with two green splotches of paint—Shana's paintballs. Snake Eyes smiled broadly, stood up from behind his boulder and started to walk toward Charlie.

One short, sharp shot.

A blue flower of paint blossomed across Snake Eyes' back. Even as Shana turned in disbelief, bringing her gun around to shoot Cam, Cam fired again, and a bright blue splotch suddenly appeared on Shana's upper chest. Shana's jaw dropped open in disbelief.

That was how she got blue paint on her teeth.


	27. Chapter 27: Hike

**Chapter 27: Hike**

"That was _not_ funny," Shana complained.

Cam, sitting on the rec room couch with a beer, tittered. "Yes it was. Oh, yes it was."

Shana put her fists on her hips. "You _cheated_!"

Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Um, no we didn't. When you explained this to Cam, you told her that everyone gets issued different colored paintballs for a reason. And you told her that she's out if she gets hit by a paintball of a color belonging to the other team. You never, ever said she's out if she has her own paint on her. And then you only have yourself to blame for that; you saw her sitting there, you saw the blue paint, and you completely forgot Cam's paint was blue and thought she'd been taken out of the game. You lost track of which color was issued to who."

Shana knew he was right, but she was still grumpy about it. "I still think you cheated," she insisted. "You had to. Somehow. I don't know how you did, but you cheated."

"I played possum. Played dead. It's not cheating, it's a survival tactic. Pretend you're injured or hurt worse than you really are, buy yourself time."

Shana looked at Cam, suddenly serious. "You had to pretend those clients hurt you worse than they actually did just to buy yourself some time to heal."

Cam met her gaze steadily, without flinching. "Yes."

Shana dropped her eyes. "I'm not complaining anymore." But then she looked at the guys, fiercely. "She's on _my_ team the next time we go out."

Snake Eyes' hands flashed. _We know that tactic now. A good one, but not one that you'll be able to trick us with again._

Cam didn't look at all upset, she simply tossed back the last of her beer. "There are other tricks. We'll see. Shana and I can take you." She heaved herself up out of the couch to put her bottle in the trash can, then wobbled abruptly.

Charlie put out a hand to steady her. "Whoa."

Cam giggled. "I think I had a little too much."

Shana deftly twitched the bottle out of her hand. "Definitely. That's what, the third one?"

"Fourth." Charlie grinned as Cam hiccupped.

"Yep, definitely enough. Seems a shame to let that go to waste, though…" and Shana tossed back the last of the beer in the bottle, then sent it sailing across the room into the trashcan. "Cam, you're not used to alcohol, so I strongly recommend that you work that off before you go to sleep or tomorrow morning you're going to have a hangover like you wouldn't believe."

"Don't worry. I have a great way to work that off," Charlie said cheerfully.

Shana held up a hand. "Don't tell me. I don't want to know." But she smiled warmly at her friends. "Are you going to need the hot tub?"

"No, I think the lake will do." Charlie swept Cam up in his arms as she screamed with laughter. "Come on now, witchling," he said cheerfully. "Let's get you sobered up."

"You're not dumping me in the lake again, are you? Charlie! Don't you dare!" Her giggles faded off down the hallway along with Charlie's heavy tread, until Snake Eyes and Shana were alone in the quiet of the room.

Shana cuddled up next to Snake Eyes, smiling. "It was a clever ploy. I can't believe I didn't realize it was her own paint. I swear I must be slipping."

Snake Eyes hands flashed. _You're not. She's just really good at this. While we learned because it was part of our training, she learned because she'd have died if she didn't._

Shana sobered, staring into thin air. "No child should ever have to learn those things as a matter of survival, Snake Eyes. I find the whole idea absolutely repugnant."

_I do too. I like the skills she has—that playing dead tactic is absolutely brilliant, and I can't wait to try it on Duke during our annual team building exercises…but I deplore the way she learned them, and the reasons why she had to._

"Exactly." Shana nodded. "So what do we want to do tomorrow?"

_Let's take them on a tour of the property._

"Are you sure? I mean, this was your place originally. I know you didn't mind that I invited them, but it's your place and your property and you value your privacy and peace—" she stopped because he'd placed a finger on her lips.

_It's not 'mine' anymore, Shana. It's ours. Yours and mine. You have as much right to it as I do, and what you want, I want. I'm fine with it, sweetheart. Really. They are both close friends. I owe Charlie my sanity, for keeping me anchored to you while you were missing, and I owe Cam my life for bringing you back to me. I can't imagine what it cost her, and every time I look at her struggling not to mind that her body is warped and in pain, it reinforces again that I owe her everything._ He smiled. _Your father adopted her into the O'Hara clan. And I'm an O'Hara now too, in case you forgot. So that makes her my sister. _His eyes got a distant, faraway look. _She even reminds me of my sister, a little bit. Theresa was quiet but passionate, loved everyone and everything, always looked for the positive side of people, the good things about them. She could see good in people no one else could see. A lot of the people who knew her called her naïve, but she wasn't blind to their faults, she just preferred not to focus on them. I miss her._

Shana laid a gentle hand on his arm. "I know. I consider Cam as a sister, too, more than Siobhan, unfortunately. It feels traitorous, but there it is. She's sacrificed a lot for me, irregardless of what it might cost her personally, and Siobhan wouldn't lift a finger unless it benefitted her in some way and she got money for it. Sometimes I can't believe we even have the same parents." She sighed. "Come on. Let's go to bed." A mischievous smile that had a lot of promise to it. "And we can pick up where we left off…"

The next day dawned clear and bright, and the slight chill of the morning promised that it was going to be a lovely day for backpacking—for Shana and Snake eyes, used to the weather up here in the mountains, the morning chill would give way to a warm day, but not hot. Cam and Charlie were both enthusiastic when they heard they'd be backpacking that day; Cam confessed that she was looking forward to exploring the surrounding land, that this place reminded her of her cottage on the reservation in the western New York mountains. After a quick breakfast of eggs and bacon, oatmeal and coffee, with backpacks equipped with water and energy bars for snacking along the way, they set out.

The land was really beautiful, the rugged peaks of the old mountain range somewhat worn down by time—the Sierra Nevadas weren't the highest, youngest range in California, and some of the oldest mountains were now little more than rolling hills. But on a crisp clear cool day in late spring, with low humidity and a gentle breeze, you could see for miles around.

Shana didn't tell Charlie and Cam, but she had an ulterior motive in dragging them all out on a backpacking trip. Charlie and Snake Eyes had been unable to focus on anything while their wives had been missing, and needed to get back in shape—and when they got back, Shana would need to pass the physical tests in order to be recertified for duty. Cam wouldn't even be considered fit for duty until Doc figured out where to send her for her scar reduction surgery, but staying in shape would help her bounce back quicker—and remembering the difficult time Cam had with her breathing and her strained lungs, as much as Shana would hate to do it, Cam's training and fitness was her responsibility and she had a duty to inform General Hawk if Cam was unable to resume her duties as an Army officer. Her strained, labored breathing in Atlanta had worried Shana more than she'd wanted to admit, and she needed to know if it was just the unusually warm winter and heavy, sticky, muggy air that was causing the strain in her lungs, or if it was an underlying physical condition. She was planning on watching Cam carefully on this trip.

They climbed past the tumble of boulders where the paintball war had taken place the day before, the boulders themselves still splotched with paint. Cam and Charlie started to snicker, but Shana's glare stopped them—until her back was turned. She could still hear them chuckling to themselves, though.

Up over the summit, a pause to look around them at the breathtaking beauty of the scenery. This high up, the thin, clear air let them see for miles around, and Shana had always, personally, thought this must be what people who climbed Everest must feel—like they were on top of the world and they could reach up and touch the sky. And judging by their reactions, the others weren't immune to it, either, not even Snake Eyes, who had owned this place long before he'd even met her. It still astonished her that he could have fallen in love with her, become so accepting of her and the way she was that he would share his life, his home, everything he had with her.

"This is so gorgeous," Cam said finally, looking at Shana with a light in her eyes that Shana hadn't seen from her in a while. "It's like being on top of the world, like there are no boundaries and you're completely free. I can see why you'd want to come here instead of staying at Atlanta."

"I may have grown up there, and my family is there, but this is where I feel most at home. And this was why I wanted you to come with us."

"After all this is over, I'd like you to come to the reservation and see my home. I mean, we don't have a hot tub, or anything fancy, but…it's home, and everyone on the reservation is really accepting as long as you respect our laws and customs and traditions. I think you'd like it there, despite its lack of luxury."

Shana gave Cam a hug. "Cam, you're family. I'd never dream of refusing if you invited me just because it doesn't have a hot tub. Family, and company, is the most important thing—everything else is window dressing." She grinned. "Besides, I could probably talk you into a couple of improvements." She shaded her eyes with her hand, looked around. "There's a spring down there that Snake eyes and I discovered a few years back. It has the best-tasting water I've ever drunk. Come on, you have to try it. Let's go find it. "

The spring was right where she remembered it, and it was bubbling merrily up out of the ground into a tiny rock pool before soaking into the moss that lined the ground around the rocks. Shana called for a halt here for a short while; it had been a while since she'd had to use her legs that much and she didn't need muscle strain to make that worse. And, while Cam wasn't struggling to breathe and showed little signs of tiring, Shana didn't want to exhaust her. Stamina and endurance was an important part of being certified fit for duty, and Shana didn't want to put her through a SERE-type endurance test—just enough to gradually build her back up.

"You're right about the water," Cam said after her first sip. "This is so much better than anything I tasted before—it's a natural spring, right?"

"Yes, it is. We discovered it a few years back but decided not to tell anyone about it—last thing we want is some over-priced developer to come in with mining and drilling machines and dig everything up and tear it apart. We like our peace and quiet."

Cam emptied out the bag of water tucked into the special compartment of her backpack. "Forget the tap water. I want more of this." Shana grinned, but agreed to wait as Cam patiently filled a small plastic bottle from the spring, emptied it into the water bag, and repeated. It would take a while, the spring bubbled up slowly, but she knew it was worth it.

They were about ready to head back out on their hike when Snake Eyes held up a warning hand. The others froze instantly, alert; something about his face, his gesture, indicated he'd heard something that alarmed him. After a moment, they heard it too—the sound of heavy feet tramping through the underbrush, voices—male—and all of it clearly indicative of someone who wasn't expecting to run into anyone.

"They're trespassing on our property—" Shana started, but Snake Eyes held up a hand to silence her, then the four of them melted into the brush. Some instinct kept them all silent. Yes, it was possible that this group was just a bunch of hikers who'd lost their way and were completely harmless, but some extra sense urged caution on the four Joes.

They were standing just inside the treeline when the group of people they'd heard broke through the treeline on the opposite side of the little clearing and stopped. Six people, all of them men, dressed in hunting/camouflage garb; each one sported a large Bushmaster hunting rifle slung across his back, and belts and utility pouches bristled with other ammunition, hunting knives, and machetes.

"Let's stop and take a break here, guys. Look, there's water here." They crowded around the tiny spring, disturbing the rocks around it, heavy boots tearing up the soft green carpet of moss. Not that the Joes hadn't had boots on, but they'd all been quietly respectful of nature and the land around them. Shana gritted her teeth, upset at the wanton destruction, but Snake Eyes held her back.

"How's it taste?" another man, with a heavy, full dark beard, asked the first man who had spoken.

"Like deer piss," he man said. "But it's water. Come and get some."

"We'll have to take turns," the second guy said. "It's not coming up fast enough."

"Well, let's dig it out and enlarge it, then," the first man growled.

Cam moved before Charlie could catch her sleeve and pull her back, stepping out of the bushes and standing in front of them. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, her hair in two braids, but despite the almond shape of her eyes, she was distinctly Native American. "You are trespassing," she said quietly, evenly. "This is private property."

If they'd been lost hikers, they would have responded with a respectful 'sorry'. Shana, Snake Eyes and Charlie tensed as the first man who'd spoken hooked his thumbs into his belt and looked her up and down. "Well now, we didn't see no markers saying this was private property, pretty lil' lady."

Behind him, the second guy snickered. "Dude, if you think she's pretty you need to take off the beer goggles."

Cam ignored that; her tone and expression never changed from one of measured, even politeness. "You are trespassing. Please leave."

"And if we don't wanna? Whatcha gonna do?" the guy sneered as he stepped forward, capacious belly preceding him. Cam stood her ground, arms loose by her sides, knees slightly flexed, ready for a possible confrontation; Shana noted with approval that her lessons on self-defense and hand-to-hand were paying off, but she'd have to teach Cam how to adjust her stance now that one shoulder was warped and higher than the other.

"You are leaving." The politeness was gone; it was a flat declaration.

"Well, see here, we're going to have to explain something to you. Me and my buddies here, we didn't see no markers says this is private property. And I ain't seen a house for miles. And there ain't no way you gonna make the six of us leave…lil thing like you can't take us on, especially with the rest of our buddies back down there on their way up. So why don't you just be a good little Indian and sit down and smoke a peace pipe with us? Maybe after we done smokin', you might even see fit to show us a little hospitality afterward, hmm?"

He never even saw it coming. Before his friends could blink, he was on the ground, one meaty arm twisted up behind his back, face mashed flat into the ground. "You are trespassing," and now Cam's voice was a low growl. "You will leave." She stepped away, crossed the clearing to the bushes on the other side, and vanished before any of them could react.


	28. Chapter 28: Discovery

**Chapter 28: Discovery**

She circled the clearing to rejoin Charlie, Snake Eyes, and Shana. "Think I taught that idiot a lesson?" she asked in a whisper as they peered through the screening foliage into the clearing, where the men were milling around in some considerable confusion. The first guy who had spoken was slowly picking himself off the ground, face red; not a good sign, as he also looked angry on top of it.

"You can't teach knuckleheads like that a lesson that sticks unless it involves pain," Shana growled angrily. "They've been warned, they are trespassing, and they need to leave."

"He said there were others. That this isn't all of them. I say we wait and see how many of them are here. And…Shana, is it hunting season? Why would they be coming through here with rifles and guns?"

"They're up to no good. This is spring, you don't hunt in spring because you could hit a mom with babies, or a pregnant doe. There's not much else up here, deer, bears, maybe a mountain lion or two…but it's not hunting season and I can't imagine what they'd be doing here. And the boundaries of our property ARE clearly marked, Snake Eyes and I check the trees every time we come here and spray paint the outer bark with colored stripes to denote the edge of our property and the beginning of the wilderness. If you ask me, these people are poachers. Or worse, they're unregulated militia, the kind of crazy person who buys a gun and joins a club of other gun owners and calls themselves a militia when they don't even know the meaning of the word." Shana was clearly disgusted.

The six in the clearing seemed disinclined to leave it, and settled in, clearly waiting—although they'd stopped talking about digging up the spring and instead waited patiently for the water to bubble up so they could refill their water bottles. About an hour later, they all heard voices, and the six in the clearing stood, looking in anticipation down the way they'd come, and shortly another group of about eight joined them.

"We got us a problem," the first man said to the guy who was heading up the second group. "Was a little Indian squaw here a little bit ago, said we were trespassing. Real hostile little thing too, got angry and twisted my arm when I told her we just stopped for water and were going to move on. I don't think she's still around, probably gone to get couple of braves together. Think we got enough ammo to take them on?"

"If it's Indians we should go, because we would be trespassing, right?" said a nervous, rabbit-faced man toward the back of the second group.

The leader snorted. "Those colored trees we passed awhile back weren't painted by no Indians. They were painted by regular people. Probably some rich guy who uses the place as a summer retreat and doesn't come here much the rest of the time. The Indian's probably from some reservation somewhere, but I guarantee this ain't their property."

"Suppose she tells somebody she saw us here?"

He snorted. "So? She didn't see nothing, just a buncha hikers with guns. Didn't see us kill nothing yet outta season, and they gotta catch you in the act or they gotta see you in the act of killing something. They don't got that, they ain't going to bother us none. I'll tell you somethin', though, if we see her again, let's scare her some and make her think twice 'bout tellin' someone she seen us up here."

"But if we scare her she'll bring more'a her people up here to investigate. We can't hide our stuff from that many people."

"Then we help her meet with an accident. Accidents happen all the time out here, nothing new."

"I don't think this is a good idea," the nervous one said.

The leader snorted. "That's why you ain't the leader, 'cause nothin's a good idea for you. Git movin'."

The Joes waited until the fourteen men had gone on by, heading on out toward wherever it was they were going, before stepping out of the brush. "Well, now we know they're up to no good," Shana said grimly. "Problem is, what are we going to do about it?"

"We know they're up to no good, but we can't prove it. Running around out here with hunting rifles outside of hunting season is suspicious, but nothing that a cop could arrest them for. We can't alert them until we have proof."

"Let's split up," Cam said quickly. "Snake Eyes and Charlie, you two can go back the way they came and see if they left anything, any evidence. My bet is that they're poachers, killing animals out of season for hide or meat or something like that; Shana and I can follow them, see what they're doing and if they're up to no good. You'll know through our bond if there's something going on that you need to know about."

Snake Eyes hands flashed. _Why can't __**we**__ go after the men and __**you**__ go see what evidence they left?_

"They've already seen me. If they see me, and not Shana, they'll think I'm just following them and not think anything of it—they've already stopped thinking of me as a threat. If they see you, they're going to be alarmed—and the way they were talking, they don't have any problems shooting you guys and trying to eliminate anyone who might be a possible witness to what they were doing. I don't want to risk that."

Snake Eyes looked reluctant, but he signed, _That makes sense_.

Shana shouldered her pack. "Okay. Cam and I are going to follow them, you go and find out what they were up to. Stay in touch. The slightest hint of anything wrong, or a feeling that anything is going to go wrong, you let us know, okay?"

They split up.

They didn't even have to try to retrace the backtrail of the men they'd just met. It was all too obvious; these men were clumsy amateurs compared to the militarily-trained Snake Eyes, and about as subtle as an escaped zoo elephant on a city street to Charlie's Native American training.

Half an hour of backtracking, during which Snake Eyes informed him of where the boundaries of the property was, and they got to what was apparently the men's camp. Ten tents, set out in a rough semi-circle around the remains of s campfire, each tent with branches and pine boughs dragged over it in an attempt to hide it from any above searchers. "An amateur attempt," Charlie snorted as they crouched in the brush at the edge of the clearing, peering through to make sure there was no one in the camp before they walked in.

And their purpose for being there was immediately clear. Draped over wooden racks off to one side of the camp were hides and furs, some from animals Charlie didn't really recognize but Snake Eyes certainly did. Deer were readily apparent, and—which made Charlie clench his fist—the spots on the deer fur indicated fawns, baby deer. There were at least eight of them. Larger, brownish-tan hides, obviously from larger deer, does and bucks, most likely, were draped over larger racks; and four deer heads, three does and one buck with an impressive rack of antlers, sat close by.

_They are shooting deer out of season. And killing babies._

Snake Eyes nodded, pointed. _Those furs there, the tawny ones. Those are mountain lions. There are not many left in the wild, they are a protected species, and we should not be seeing their skins here._ His anger was apparent in the harsh, jerky movements of his hands as he signed.

One of the tent flaps opened, and a man came out. So there were fifteen men, too many for the Joes to take on without help; Snake Eyes tensed as the man walked toward the place where he and Charlie hid, but the man walked past their screening culvert and toward a wooden crate sitting on the ground a few feet away from the last tent in the group, then kicked the side of the crate.

There was an answering howl from inside, and Snake Eyes' eyes widened, as did Charlie's. Although they couldn't see inside the crate, what they were hearing was a young animal, and they realized what it had to be as Charlie took in Snake Eyes' furious glare. _That sounds like a cub in that crate. They killed the mother, and kept the baby. I wonder what they're going to do with it?_

_I don't know and I don't care. Let's try and reach the girls. The men they're tracking have to head back here after they're done hunting for the day, so let's have the authorities waiting here for them when they get back. Tell the girls to range out ahead of them, scare away the deer and whatever else they might think of to shoot, while I stay here and watch the camp, you head back to the cabin and call authorities._

Charlie nodded silently and slipped away through the trees as Snake Eyes concentrated on reaching out mentally. _Shana?_

Despite Snake Eyes saying that Shana needed to work on her stealth, Cam noticed that Shana was pretty good at sneaking through the forest noiselessly. Sure, not as good at it as Charlie and Cam herself, but better than the group of idiots they were following, who were making enough noise for a herd of elephants. They either weren't trying very hard to be quiet, or they didn't see the need; Shana signed to Cam when they passed a tree that had one red stripe and one black stripe spray painted on its bark that that was the end of the property she and Snake Eyes owned and the start of a small public preserve, and no hunting was allowed in the preserve except by the rangers and preserve police, and only when an animal became a nuisance.

They had followed the men deeper into the Sierra Nevada mountains, undetected, and were just starting to worry a little about their men when Shana felt the lightest brush of Snake Eyes' mind against hers. She stopped, reached down deep into herself for that shimmering silver thread, and moments later images flooded her mind. She saw the racks with drying skins draped over them, saw the furs belonging to the mountain lions, heard the whimper as the man who'd been left behind to guard the camp kicked the side of a wooden crate that obviously held at least one frightened baby animal.

When she snapped back to the present, she saw the same anger on Cam's face that she knew was on hers. "I don't mind hunting prey when they are a nuisance or a danger, and I have a bear fur at home. But just killing because they want the fur is…wrong." She swallowed. "Charlie was heading back to the cabin to contact authorities, and on the way back he stumbled over the carcasses of the animals—they were skinned, and only enough meat to feed the hunters was taken, everything else just left to rot." She shook her head at what she perceived as waste; to Native Americans, each animal had a spirit, and thanks was given for each life that an animal 'gave' to a human—and then nothing was wasted. Every scrap was used, hide, fur, hair; bone and marrow, organs, even offal, things that humans couldn't eat was turned into dog food or used as bait to catch fish. To kill an animal only for its fur and leaving everything else to waste was incomprehensible. "Charlie's going to have them meet him at the cabin, then he'll take them up to where Snake Eyes is waiting by the camp, and they will all wait until this lot of idiots gets back there. We're to observe, watch, report."

Cam nodded. "Let's walk out ahead of them. If we scare all the game out from the trail in front of them, they won't have anything to hunt and they'll turn and go back to the camp all that much faster."

That sounded like an excellent idea to Shana, and she and Cam ranged out ahead of the poachers, staying in sight of each other and communicating silently by hand signals. Maybe it was their imagination, or maybe it was just that they had served together and were so alike that each knew what the other was doing before they did it, but it seemed to both of them that they could hear each others' thoughts, knew exactly how to coordinate. But it was impossible, their bond was only with their men, wasn't it? Shana wondered as she flung a stick at a rabbit, sending it skittering into the bushes.

Behind her, she could hear the men start grumbling. First, just a few comments about the lack of game, usually punctuated by, "These woods are full of deer and stuff. We'll find something soon." But as the day wore on and there was no sign of anything (Cam was even burying deer droppings, and apparently the poachers were not so woods-wise as to recognize the signs of human digging.)

By mid-afternoon there was a lot of grumbling, and the optimism of the late morning was gone. Now the nervous, rabbit-faced one was openly (and loudly) complaining that the 'Indian spirit' they'd run into that morning had cursed them, making them unlucky in finding game. Although the others scoffed at his mutterings as 'old wives tales' and 'superstitious nonsense', even they started looking out on both sides of the trail, and it was through sheer bad luck that the leader's glance to the right side of the trail happened to be at the very moment that Shana crossed it. Her distinctive red hair was too easy to spot, and he leaped forward, moving with a speed she didn't know he had in that bulky frame of his. "Weelll, looky what we got here," he drawled.

Shana blinked, made her eyes look huge, then burst into tears. "Oh thank goodness someone found me, I was afraid I was going to spend the whole night up here!"

He bought it, hook, line and sinker. "Why, are you lost, honey?" and if she hadn't already known he was up to no good, she might just have been taken in by his apparent show of concern. "Came out hiking here all by yourself?"

A woman alone wouldn't be a threat. And if they knew about Cam, there was a chance that they might use those hunting rifles on the two women. Shana shrank into herself, hung her head, and did her absolute best to imitate Courtney's 'dumb blonde supermodel' façade. A whining, clinging female might disgust them enough to consider dumping her body in a ravine somewhere; but silly wouldn't raise suspicion, and if she could convince them she was an empty-headed silly female chances were good she could convince them she was no threat. Just enough to get them to let their guard down around her, and then she could slip away. She cursed herself for getting caught; she was slipping, she was a trained Army Master Sergeant, for pity's sake, she knew better! What was wrong with her? "I came up here because I wanted a good look at the whole mountain, and I thought the top would be good for pictures. It looked so easy, I wasn't expecting it to be so hard. It didn't look that hard from down there." She pointed down the mountain.

"Well, don't worry, you won't be up here all alone. We got you." His tone was outright patronizing, and made Shana grit her teeth, but she had to pull this off. Not that she couldn't put him on the ground, grab his gun, and run before the others even knew what was happening, but she didn't want to chance anything. She was just glad she'd tucked her dog tags into her shirt so they wouldn't see it, and they weren't perceptive enough to see the bead chain around the back of her neck.

"Are you park rangers?" she said, widening her eyes as she pointed at the hunting rifle on his back. "That's an awfully big gun." Internally she winced at the stupidity of the comment.

The men looked at each other. "Uh, yeah. We're plainclothes park rangers. We carry these because there are mountain lions and bears out there and we need to be able to protect ourselves while we're out looking for pretty little ladies like you."

_Sure you do,_ but Shana didn't say that. "Can you tell me how to get back to town?"

"Even better, we'll show you. We're about done for the day here anyway." The leader took her arm and started to steer her back down the mountain, ostensibly toward the campsite below. Shana went along, allowed herself to be led, but a quick glance out the corner of her eye showed Cam following along_. Follow my lead,_ she wanted to say, but didn't dare…and wasn't really necessary anyway, Cam appeared perfectly willing to just follow and watch.


	29. Chapter 29: Poachers

**Chapter 29: Poachers**

Snake eyes stiffened. _We got trouble._ _The men saw Shana. She's traveling with them now under the guise of a lost hiker. She has them convinced she's an empty-headed silly female._

"Empty-headed and silly are not words that come to mind when talking about Shana O'Hara," Charlie said, but smiled anyway. "We married some clever girls, didn't we."

Snake Eyes smiled back. _We may be stupid males, but at least we were smart enough to marry clever females. _

Charlie laughed—then had to turn and translate for the park ranger standing next to them. "Snake Eyes' wife was spotted as she tried to follow the poachers, and to make sure they didn't see her as a threat, she pretended to be a lost hiker. But they're on their way back now; the girls scared enough game off that the poachers haven't shot anything today and they're turning around and coming back. Get ready to apprehend them—but also be warned that the red-haired woman with them is his wife and a trained Army soldier."

The ranger looked unconvinced, but nodded.

He'd been looking unconvinced the whole time, from the moment that Charlie met him at the cabin and led them to the forward operations base Snake Eyes had established overlooking the poacher's camp. Their expressions said it all; _you guys are Army elite?_ The skeptical looks had lessened somewhat when confronted with Snake Eyes' scarred, forbidding visage; but there were still some reservations, especially when Charlie told the Rangers that they were honeymooning here with their wives, both also military, and had run across poachers.

A group of the rangers had already gone back down the trail, taking a circuitous route to where the carcasses had been left to rot, and had taken pictures. Disposal was another matter; but it had eventually been decided to simply leave them there; the vultures and carrion birds were already busy, and some larger carnivore had evidently staked a claim as well, so it had been decided to let nature take care of the remains. Now they were all just waiting for all the poachers to return to camp before rounding them all up.

They were all a little worried about the cub inside the crate; apart from the howl when the man had kicked the side of the crate—a move he repeated every couple of hours as if to make sure the captive in it remained alive—the prisoner inside the crate was silent and apparently not making an attempt to escape. No scratching, clawing, hissing, protesting; Charlie was worried the cub was either too young to be separated from its mother or injured/dying.

It was just after sunset, though the last of the light hadn't yet left the sky, that Cam finally joined them. She nodded simply to the Ranger, then addressed all of them. "They're coming. Shana's fine, she's been pretending to be a silly giggling idiot so they wouldn't suspect a thing. They actually think she's a model, here on assignment for a photo shoot; she's been telling them all the stories Courtney's told us about her time as a supermodel, and they've bought it, hook, line and sinker. Gullible idiots, but it's worked to our advantage so I'm not going to complain too much." A slight smile. "She's very good at it, though; she's shoveled enough verbal manure on them that she could have fertilized half the mountain by now, and they bought it, every single bit."

And sure enough, not half an hour later, here came Shana, hanging on the arm of the lead poacher and giggling. By this time, the rangers had arranged themselves around the perimeter of the camp, waiting with guns and rifles for a signal to move in and arrest the poachers. The lead Ranger looked even more skeptical when he saw the long red hair hanging loose, the porcelain skin and long legs under the shorts.

The poachers strolled into the camp, plunked their bags and packs down with a sigh as the leader went to talk to the guy they'd left behind watching the camp. As soon as he stepped away from her side, Shana reached down, picked up the rifle, and cocked it. "You're all under arrest for poaching."

The leader stared at her in disbelief. "Looky here, missy.."

"Don't 'Missy' me. You know those trees you passed with the black and red stripes? That was _my_ land you trespassed on. My land and my husband's. You idiot, all that time I spent walking with you and you never once noticed my wedding ring?"

"Well, now, Ma'am…"

"And get another thing straight. The name is Shana. Not Missy, not ma'am, not 'pretty lil thing' or any of the other things you've called me while we were walking back." She held the gun steady with one hand while she fished her dog tags out from under her shirt. "If you have a problem saying my name, you can call me by my rank. Master Sergeant Shana O'Hara, US Army." Snake Eyes, Cam, and Charlie stepped out to flank her, and she nodded to them. "You've already met Corporal Cameron Arlington, and beside her is her husband Specialist Charlie Ironknife, and this is my husband Master Sergeant Snake Eyes. No, I'm not giving you his name because if I did I'd have to kill you, and I'd much prefer that you stood trial for the animals you wantonly slaughtered."

The leader finally found his voice. "The four of you can't arrest the fifteen of us."

Shana moved so quickly he never even saw her coming. One moment she was facing him with his gun, the next minute Snake Eyes was holding the hunting rifle that had been in her hands, and the leader was flat on the ground with his arm once again twisted up his back, exactly as Cam had pinned him hours earlier. "I can break this arm right now and while you were screaming I can get three more. And Snake Eyes is even better. Do you really want to tempt me, because I swear I'll do it. Mountain lions are endangered, and you've killed three. And there's a baby animal in that wooden crate."

She looked up as the park ranger sauntered out of the bushes, followed by the rest of the rangers who had hidden around the perimeter of the camp. They stepped out with guns raised, but there was little point; the other poachers had put their guns down and were standing with their hands on their heads, plainly surrendering.

The head Ranger, whose name plate read Lewis, was rubbing his chin as he walked up, but it didn't quite hide the grin. "If you twist that arm off, Master Sergeant ma'am, we won't be able to handcuff him, so I suggest maybe you might want to consider leaving it attached for now."

Shana looked down at the poacher. "But if I twist his arm off he'll never be able to go hunting again. That's got a lot more appeal for me right now."

"If he asked you nicely?" Lewis seemed to be enjoying himself way too much.

Shana regarded the man on the ground. "I might consider it."

Lewis crouched on one knee next to the poacher's face. "Now, I know it smarts, getting bested by a slip of a girl you thought was a silly bubble-headed female, but from where I'm standing, buddy, you got serious problem and a little humility might go a long way right about now. A long way toward keeping your arm. So how about it, you want to think about apologizing to the Master Sergeant here for trespassing on her land and asking her nicely if you can keep your arm?"

The man mumbled something unintelligible.

"Did I hear something? I wasn't sure." Shana leaned forward, the simple movement applying a little more pressure on his arm—in the wrong direction.

He howled. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!"

"Ooh. That sounded almost convincing." Shana was obviously enjoying herself. Snake Eyes was trying—and not quite managing—to hide his smile. Ranger Lewis wasn't even bothering to hide his smile anymore, and a few of his rangers were laughing outright.

The poacher's face was red as he struggled to lift his cheek clear off the ground. "I'm sorry for trespassing please don't rip off my arm!"

"Well, seeing how you asked. Somewhat politely…" Shana stepped off him and let his arm go. The limb flopped limply into the dirt, and the man gave a huge exhale of relief, then made mo protest as two park rangers pulled him up off the ground and handcuffed his arms behind his back. None too gently either.

"Now, I know the penalties for poaching aren't really all that stiff, but I swear to you, every one of you—if I catch you on my land again—anything inside the boundary of trees marked with one black and one red stripe—I will shoot on sight." Shana took the hunting rifle from Snake Eyes, shouldered it carefully, aimed at a nearby tent. "See that bee on the canvas?" She fired.

The bee was gone, replaced by a gaping hole. She was expressionless as she gave the gun to Ranger Lewis. "If I'd really wanted to kill you all, I could have done so by now, very easily. You are lucky I did not, but don't push your luck—if you trespass again I will shoot to kill. You'd have been like that bee, gone before he even knew he was in danger. Now, _get off my land_!" Her voice dropped to a low growl, the dangerous sound of Shana O'Hara completely pissed off.

The men needed no further urging; they piled into the Rangers' vehicles almost eagerly—anything to get away from the red-haired thunderstorm watching them with cold eyes. Shana watched the rangers start loading them in, then turned her attention to her friends.

Cam had crossed the clearing to the wooden crate and was crouched next to it, nails scrabbling at the wooden slats, trying to figure out how to open it. "The lid is nailed down. They didn't intend for the baby to get out."

Ranger Lewis cleared his throat. "It's become something of a sport around here for ranchers who lost livestock to a mountain lion to find a baby one, put it in a crate and tease and torment it until it dies. We've been trying to find out who was bringing the babies down out of the mountains. I guess we found the culprits."

"I want it out of there." Cam was still scraping at the crate with her fingers, ignoring splinters as she tried to get it open, and Shana realized it was because Cam felt some sort of empathy with this imprisoned baby.

Snake Eyes laid a hand on her shoulder; she responded to the unspoken request and sat back. One fast side kick from Snake Eyes later and the side of the crate caved in, and Cam reached in and picked up a handful of fur.

And to their surprise, it wasn't a mountain lion cub, but a wolf cub. Trapped inside the crate, it had been forced to relieve itself and the results had plastered its fur to it. It seemed weak; it barely moved as Cam picked it up, and as she gently peeled one eyelid back to take a look at it, it whimpered feebly and closed its eyes again.

Cradling it in her arms, unmindful of the fecal matter that plastered its stinking fur down to its body, Cam unscrewed the top of her canteen and gently tipped water into the cub's mouth. At first it didn't swallow, but when she sat down on the ground, put it in her lap, and gently rubbed its throat, it finally swallowed—and then opened its mouth for more. "It's still alive. It can be saved. Do you guys have an animal shelter or something that will take orphaned cubs like this one in?"

Ranger Lewis scratched his head. "Well, we do, but they're understaffed and shorthanded and they don't take ones this little. They can't watch these babies and handfeed them and take care of them. There is a wildlife ranch in Oregon who will take babies like this, but it'll take them a week to get out here."

"So what happens? Are you just going to leave it here to die?" Shana demanded incredulously.

Ranger Lewis shrugged. "Sorry, Mrs. O'Hara. There's simply not enough personnel to care for it until the wildlife rescue people come to get it."

"I'll take care of it." Cam said determinedly. "For a week, until the rescue people get here. I'm assuming there's a replacement formula or some equivalent that can be given?"

"Um…there is, and the animal shelter does have some, but… it's a lot of work."

Shana looked at the little bundle of fur whimpering pathetically in Cam's lap, now eagerly sucking down water from Cam's canteen, and rolled her eyes. "We're Army. We're not afraid of hard work. We'll take it home with us—can you get some of the formula from the animal shelter and bring it back?"

"I'll go with them," Charlie said instantly. "The cub will need blankets and an animal crate and supplies, so while I'm in town I can get those. Snake Eyes can come with me and we can get everything you girls will need to take care of it."

Shana aimed a swat in his direction. "Go get the supplies, Specialist."

"Aye aye, Master Sergeant, Ma'am." He saluted, but it was spoiled by his and Snake Eyes' grin, and then they headed in the direction of their vehicle, which Charlie had driven here with the Rangers.

Back at the cabin, Shana out her hands on her hips. "He is not coming into the house—"

"Shana!" Cam protested.

"—until he has a bath. Phew. He stinks. He can't want to keep smelling like that."

Cam raised an eyebrow. "Shana, he's a wolf. I don't think he cares how he smells."

"I don't care what he thinks. He's getting a bath." Shana shook her head briskly. "I don't know what's gotten into me, I can't imagine what possessed me to let you bring that ball of fur into my nice clean house, but for some reason I can't turn away a baby. So. He's getting a bath before he comes in." She disappeared into the house, came back with a pair of heavy leather gardening gloves. "You," she stabbed a finger in Cam's direction, "go in and get washed up and changed. You got his crap all over your clothes and you smell only slightly better than he does." Cam giggled and ducked around Shana to go inside.

He did _not_ like the bath.

The little water Cam had given him seemed to have revived him somewhat, and he protested at the top of his little baby lungs at the treatment he was receiving as Shana dunked him in a tub that she usually left sitting next to the back door so that if she or Snake Eyes was out in the meadow barefooted they could rinse their feet before walking in. This got the worst of the gunk out of his fur, and then she paused as she dumped out the water and put a little more—about an inch—inside the tub, and put him down in it. His plaintive howls followed her in, then abated as she came back out with the liquid soap they used for the dishes—the brand was one that, according to its advertising, was used to wash oil off waterfowl feathers, so she supposed it would be safe for him; she didn't want to use her shampoo in case it had something he was allergic to in it.

He didn't like the soaping and rinsing part, and when she brought out an old towel, ragged at the edges, she thought he was going to try and shred it with his claws and teeth. To her surprise, however, he submitted with surprising meekness to being wrapped up in a towel, and by the time Charlie and Snake Eyes came back with formula, a wire dog crate, sturdy pet blankets and a bottle with a silicone nipple on it, he was settled on Cam's lap, mostly contented, while Shana chopped vegetables for a salad and watched the water start to boil for pasta.

Cam put the cub down on the couch and came into the kitchen, grabbing the bottle and filling it with water from the tap, then adding some of the 'puppy replacement formula' powder to the bottle and shook it briskly. She was about to carry it out into the living room when Shana gasped. "You're giving it to him like that?"

"What's wrong with it?" Cam frowned in puzzlement at the bottle.

"You have to warm it up, Cam, you can't just give it to him cold. Did you use cold tap water or did you use warm?" She touched the side of the bottle. "Look. It's cold. He'll hate it cold. He's a baby, Cam, you have to warm it up for him." She grabbed a pair of tongs, firmly grasped the bottle in them, and dropped the bottom half of the bottle into the pot of water she'd put on to boil for the pasta. Two minutes later she fished it out with the tongs, wrapped it in a kitchen towel, and shook it until the cold inner contents mixed with the contents of the bottle closest to the outside, and the temperature of the formula equalized. "See, this is how you do it. If you don't use warm water, you have to heat it up for him," she started to say as she turned toward the living room…and stopped.

The cub was sitting there between the living room and the kitchen, panting softly. And he wasn't looking at Cam, who was now holding the bottle—he was looking right at Shana. As Cam walked over to him, holding the bottle, he growled at her, then got up on wobbly little feet and padded over to Shana, where he then sat down at her feet and stared at her expectantly.

"Hey, she's got the bottle, she's the one who decided to bring you here." Shana pointed to Cam, gently tried to turn his head in Cam's direction. "Go see her." Undeterred, the cub turned around and stared at her. Cam came over, tried to hold the bottle in front of him, nipple first. He ignored her—and the bottle—completely, focusing instead on Shana.

"I think he's decided you're his new mama," Cam chuckled. "Congratulations, Shana, it's a boy."

Shana gave Cam a dirty look, but took the bottle and settled on the kitchen floor with the cub in her lap, sucking happily.


End file.
